Monday, September 18, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
September 11th .... What were you doing?
I grew up with my parents and "elder" family members talking about significant historical events that happened and what they were doing during that moment in time. Stuff like JFK being assassinated - my mom remembered walking past a store front and seeing the news on a black and white TV. Or when President Reagan was shot, my mom was in labor with me. There are lots more stories, but the point is, it seems like you always remember what you were doing when some big event happened.
September 11th was no exception for me. Obviously being in the military it impacted my life pretty heavily, being sent on a 9 month deployment over to the middle east area. But more specifically, I remember that morning pretty clearly. A few days before my step sister had been killed in a car accident. I had been approved for emergency leave from the Navy to fly home for the funeral. The plane ticket was for the morning of September 11th. I was staying at a friends house, Dennis Rafeo - he used to go to the church, but I don't know how many people remember him anymore. I woke up that morning to have coffee and breakfast, I turned on the news, and about ten minutes later I was watching the attack live on TV. I left to try a catch my flight out, but all of the flights were cancelled. I went back to the apartment and watched the news again and was able to see both of the twin towers fall. USS Decatur, the ship I was on at the time, was immediately sent out to patrol the west coast. I wasn't able to make it onboard before they left so I spent two weeks watching the news and hanging out at the church. Finally the ship returned to port and I went back onboard, a couple of weeks later we left for my first deployment overseas. All in all in was a pretty crazy couple of weeks, and although it is a pretty somber memory - it is definitely a very memorable one.
So in honor of remembering things like 9/11 - what do you remember about that day?
I grew up with my parents and "elder" family members talking about significant historical events that happened and what they were doing during that moment in time. Stuff like JFK being assassinated - my mom remembered walking past a store front and seeing the news on a black and white TV. Or when President Reagan was shot, my mom was in labor with me. There are lots more stories, but the point is, it seems like you always remember what you were doing when some big event happened.
September 11th was no exception for me. Obviously being in the military it impacted my life pretty heavily, being sent on a 9 month deployment over to the middle east area. But more specifically, I remember that morning pretty clearly. A few days before my step sister had been killed in a car accident. I had been approved for emergency leave from the Navy to fly home for the funeral. The plane ticket was for the morning of September 11th. I was staying at a friends house, Dennis Rafeo - he used to go to the church, but I don't know how many people remember him anymore. I woke up that morning to have coffee and breakfast, I turned on the news, and about ten minutes later I was watching the attack live on TV. I left to try a catch my flight out, but all of the flights were cancelled. I went back to the apartment and watched the news again and was able to see both of the twin towers fall. USS Decatur, the ship I was on at the time, was immediately sent out to patrol the west coast. I wasn't able to make it onboard before they left so I spent two weeks watching the news and hanging out at the church. Finally the ship returned to port and I went back onboard, a couple of weeks later we left for my first deployment overseas. All in all in was a pretty crazy couple of weeks, and although it is a pretty somber memory - it is definitely a very memorable one.
So in honor of remembering things like 9/11 - what do you remember about that day?
Friday, September 01, 2006
I just got a new all-in-one printer from Dell - and I'm really excited. I've got boxes full of pictures, mostly from my many exploits in the Navy. Anyway, I just wanted to test it out and make sure I could post everything on the blog. So here are a few random pictures.
Sweet it worked... Alright this top picture is my elephant guide when I was in Phang Na, Thailand
This is a picture from my ship (USS Decatur) during an Underway Replenishment (UNREP). This is how we get fuel and stuff out at sea - it's a pretty crazy thing.
This is the Grand Mosk in Bahrain, you can't really tell from the picture but this place is HUGE.
Well, that's it for now. I have a lot of scanning to do. I'm going to try to throw up some posts based on some of the places that I went to. We'll so how that goes.
Ben
