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Friday, August 18th, 2006 06:13 pm
So, got back on Weds from my Kitsap Tour. Thoughts:

1) Why is it, that when I get the window seat, I get a pilot who doesn't point anything out. And when I have an aisle seat over the wing, the pilot mentions every landmark. Why must they taunt me so? They know how much I love to gaze upon the world from high above...

2) August in the Pacific NW is awesome. Sunny, 75 degrees, light breeze. Mountains in the background. Evergreens everywhere. Funny the way that you can only see the snowcapped top of Mt. Ranier but nothing else, so it looks like it's floating.

3) The Torpedo factory is really cool. I can't tell you anything about it, but trust me. So awesome.

4) Bremerton was pretty industrial, but not a bad town. Ate at The Boat Shed, a nice restaurant that sits on a deck in the harbor across from Turner Joy and PSNS. And of course, there's the shipyard. With vessels in various states of maintenance and inactivation - including some cut up hulls.

5) Drydocks are usually nothing special. Except when you see the one Aircraft Carrier drydock. Holy schniekies. It's like looking into the grand canyon - what with beeing six or seven stories deep and dockworkers the size of ants. Also, carriers are monstrous. I got to sit in the captain's chair. How cool is that?

6) Also went along for inspections of the SSGN conversions - the Boomers Ohio and Michigan. Again, very cool stuff which, sadly, I am unable to discuss.

7) Took the ferry to Seattle, which was awesome. Got to walk up from the waterfront to the Pike Street marketplace. Nearly killing myself with all of the effort. At some point, I do have to go back there. But I did have a "I am so totally in Seattle now" moment when we looked across the street from the fish market - and there was a dirty looking guy in flannel with stringy hair, and he was hanging out in front of a coffee shop playing guitar. Between that, and the radio station that was playing nothing but 90s era alt-grunge it was like a time-travel/flashback to the year they had the Real World in Seattle.

At some point, I think I do want to go back, so I can actually have time to see the city. The trick, as I see it, is figuring out how I'm gonna get to do this on somebody else's dollar. Still not sure about Galveston, so otherwise it looks like the next trips will be Norfolk VA, Groton CT or Newport RI. I doubt I'll be able to wrangle a trip to the Pearl Harbor Shipyard.
Friday, August 18th, 2006 22:55 (UTC)
Probably just as well. I really didn't have a lot of free time, because I wound up out there at the same time as a group of the Front Offices top young engineers and wound up just going around with them after work hours.