I've been to New York! - Jazz

The tale of my Baltimore/New York trip is past due for sure. So much has happened since then too. You can open up my Baltimore/New York photos and browse through them as you read.

The short story: I left on the HMCS Fredericton at the end of April. We spent a week or so at sea, spent a few days in Baltimore, set out to sea again, spent another few days in New York, and then sailed home.

The long story: the sailing part was hard. It was work-ups (training at sea for the ship's crew), so we practiced emergencies day and night. It became more and more difficult as the days drag into weeks.

I could've kissed the ground in Baltimore, I was so happy to get a few days of rest. We were free the first evening in Baltimore, did training the next morning, and then were free to spend the rest of that day and the next in town.

We arrived on a Friday and headed for town as soon as we'd landed the gash (unloaded the garbage) from the ship. The three Canadian ships that arrived together rented buses and we were able to catch a ride into downtown. There was a fourth Canadian ship docked somewhere downtown with a bunch of friends on board, so a friend and I set off to find out where it was parked. We walked quite a ways before we decided it was too far and preferred to go watch the new Star Trek movie instead.

There just so happened to be a theatre along the route we were walking. The show time was a ways away, so we went back to the Cheesecake Factory restaurant on the waterfront. I'd never heard of succotash until then, but mmmmmmmm was it good! And with mashed potatoes and salmon. Oh, was it ever heaven after days of drabby ship food. Absolutely heavenly.

Star Trek was very good. I recommend seeing it in theatre if it's still playing. The audience was completely geeking out as, at the end of the movie, Spock puts his hand up, and the hands in the theatre audience suddenly rose together in the Vulcan salute. Hehehe, cute! I've rarely heard a movie get applause at the end, but this one did.

The next day we worked on the ship for the morning. I had a dentist appointment on the HMCS Preserver who was parked on the dock with us. That evening was less exciting as we hit downtown again and the guys wanted to see Star Trek. I went to see X-Men:Wolverine with another friend instead. It was good but not great. Our movie ended before Star Trek did for the other guys, so we walked into their theatre and I saw the second half for a second time. Hey, I feel the need to break a small rule once in a while to maintain a sense of excitement in life :P

Dinner was a late night at Chicago for some deep dish pizza. Wow, the service sucked. And there was a hair in one person's pizza. And some wrong orders delivered. Wow.

The cab driver tried to charge us double the cost we had paid the night before. Nice try. Although I did feel slightly bad for not giving him what he asked.

There was a baseball game on Sunday to go to - Oriole's vs Yankees. The ship had got a bunch of cheap tickets and made them available for us to buy. We found out why the tickets were so cheap - we literally had the last row in the very top section of the stadium. It was a perfectly gorgeous hot, sunny day for a baseball game. Unfortunately our seats were in the shade of the stadium awning. My delicious dish of soft-serve ice cream froze me to death up there. To add to the shade was the wind that came blowing through the fence that ran around the top row of seats in the stadium. And the altitude had to have taken another degree of the outside air temperature. Brrr!

Everyone else went back to the ship, but a friend and I decided to stick out our last afternoon of freedom before heading back to what can feel like the dungeons in the sunless bowels of the ship. We walked the town a bit before heading toward Little Italy to see if there was anything good for dinner. We found it, but it was a lot of fine dining. So we kept walking.

Then we hit a area resembling the Projects. I'd never heard the term before, but I do now. I had to look it up.

We turned and headed south toward the harbour again. Suddenly we found ourselves in a very old, very cute area with big old trees and classic architecture. We stopped at one of those household items stores that has everything you ever dreamed of having in your house. I went to the sale items and got tea towels for a dollar each, and then hummed and hawed over the cute sushi sets and $75 martini sets. *sigh*

As we walked out of the store, suddenly the ship I'd been looking for two nights before appeared. They got the stinking best spot in town! Right on the waterfront in the downtown with the best bunch of restaurants and shops around - historic Fells Point. What a bunch of bums!

We were really hungry by this time. It was practically a random choice to try the Alexander's Tavern, and it turned out to be the most incredible food. God sure blessed me with some amazing food on this stop. It almost made up for the ship's food.

Then, unfortunately, back to the ship and prepping for setting sail the next day and resuming flying.

I don't remember individual days on the ship very well. They're a blur of the flight schedule constantly changing, eating bad meals with tough meat and wilted salad, reading the Bible and classic sci-fi books with my sporadically working bed light just before going to sleep, waking up at all different hours of the day depending on the flying schedule, offering candy to the flight crew while venting about the day's stupidities, and getting alternately nauseous and horribly tired depending on whether or not I was allowed to take Gravol. It solves my sea sickness but it makes me tired, and I can't take it within 8 hours of flying.

So lets just skip right to New York. YAY!!!

We arrived in New York with the parade of ships. We had to do shifts of standing on deck in our short-sleeve dress uniform. I don't know if I was allowed, but I took my camera out and snapped away. It was probably absolutely forbidden. But what did I know?

Once my shift ended, I spent most of the rest of the day on the bridge so that I could keep taking photos of the passing scenery including the skyline of New York's financial sector. Even though I'm not intimately familiar with that skyline, the absence of the world trade towers is really noticeable because we all notice photos of the skyline with the towers.

Once the parade was done, we bobbed in the line-up of ships to dock at Staten Island. Yeah, we had to take the ferry back and forth to Manhattan. Boo. Before escaping downtown, though, we had to land gash and all the rest. There were four Canadian ships docked at the one pier, so people were just running back and forth visiting all their friends and drinking up a storm, of course. I heard there was a huge supply of candy and pizza being provided just outside the gates onto the pier for all military members, so three guys and I ditched the drink fest and walked down the pier (in the dark by now) to see what we could get. We were far from the first ship to get docked, so we thought everything would be gone.

The pizza was gone, but the candy sure wasn't. We filled every pocket we had with bags of chocolates. We were hungry and thought we'd see if we could catch a cab into "downtown" Staten Island to get pizza. Just on cue, one of the guys' friends drove by in a duty van and offered to drive us to get pizza. Perfect! We ate most of the pizza by the time we got back to the pier - only 5 minutes or so. We were starving!! We made our way back to the ship, every step rustling the bulging bags of candy, the chocolate melting deep in our pockets. What satisfaction!

Staten Island was a little scary at night. Definitely not a place to go walking. The store fronts were all protected with metal grates and pull-down doors and decorated in graffiti.

I had booked a hotel room for myself and my two cabin mates - Tasha and Carmella - in Manhattan's mid-town - close to Broadway and Times Square, etc. - so that we could avoid the Fleet Week rule of wearing your uniform off ship. Between the three of us, the hotel was worth the price of not wearing our uniform. Carmella headed into town as soon as she could, and Tasha and I didn't get away from the ship until about 23:30. In fact, the nice guy who drove us to the pizza place earlier drove us two girls to the ferry. God bless him.

We got to the ferry terminal in New York quite excited. I had snapped photos of the nighttime skyline all the way across on the ferry, but the photos didn't really do the skyline justice. We were permitted to ride the subway for free as Fleet Week participants, and popped out just south of Times Square. What a sight at 3am! The streets are void of cars (and very stinky), no more crowds, clean-up crews everywhere, and the lights are still blaring as bright and obnoxious as ever away at the empty streets.

The first day was glorious! We - me, Tasha and Carmella - went for breakfast at a cute, bustling corner cafe. All the cafes around there had bars. My eating eggs benny for breakfast symbolized freedom from the ship's food again. The ship's senior cook actually got sacked after this sail. I feel bad, but the backbone of the ship's company's morale is in that food he's responsible for. I declared at the dinner table one night on the last sail that I was praying for the food to improve. What an answer to prayer we've seen.

So, off for a day of adventure! We walked through Manhattan, hitting up various famous spots along the way. We saw Radio City, the Rockefeller Center and its plaza, the cathedral from Spiderman 3, the Trump Tower (complete with Starbucks inside and a boutique dedicated to Donald Trump stuff - just too much), Tiffany's (and the Canary Diamond), FAO Schwartz (New York is Schwartz everything), and Central Park to begin with. Most of what I just mentioned was on famous 5th Ave. You can bet we saw every other gazillion-dollar name brand along 5th too. I don't really want to buy any of the stuff, I just wish I was suave enough to walk in and confidently try stuff on as if it were for real. Do I need an entourage to go in there or something?

Us girls had the mandatory and extremely delicious hotdog in Central Park. Alright, so I had a sausage and not a hot dog, but it was darn good. We ventured through the park for a bit, then headed east to walk along its outer limits and admire the mansions along 5th Ave again. We got to the Guggenheim museum, but it was closed. Only closed on Thursdays, of course. What a weird day to be closed.

Then to the Metropolitan Museum. The three of us split up and gave ourselves an hour in which to see whatever it was we wanted to see. It was an hour of flurried frenzy getting through the whole thing, but oh so gorgeous. What a beautiful museum. I don't like museums, but some of their displays were incredible.

We stopped in at the Plaza Hotel for a glimpse at the glitz of New York hotels. Breathtaking.

Then for dinner closer to the hotel. We stuffed ourselves at a place famous for the cheesecake, had cheesecake too, of course, then went our separate ways for the evening.

I stopped in at an antique shop and the owner tried to sell something to me cheap for $600. An incredibly overdressed black woman - complete with feathers - came in with her two kids, glanced around, caught sight of an antique couch, told the owner she absolutely had to have it, and walked out. Wow, what a show of unrestrained and indifferent opulence! Mind-boggling.

I dropped by our hotel room to catch my breath before diving back out. Yes, on my own. New York's main streets are very busy and there was no danger as long as I stuck to them. No more than during the day, i.e. be pick-pocket-proof.

I had found the address for a Salvation Army store that was supposedly near our hotel. I made a run for it - got some great sunset shots along the way - but found that they closed at 18:00. So on down the hill toward the Hudson and to where the Intrepid aircraft carrier is parked. I was hoping to get in for a tour, but unfortunately there was a black tie event happening that evening. It so happened to be the cocktail party someone on our ship would have had to be tasked to go to. Not me!!!

I walked along the Hudson for a while. They have a beautiful walkway along the river, ideal for walkers, runners and bikers. It's separated from the main street a bit with some large foliage between, and lanes for each direction of pedestrian. Very nicely done.

I picked up a drink at a convenience store and continued on. My next goal was Macy's. It was about 20:30 and I was sure they were about to close. The streets were still crowded with well-dressed people sauntering in every direction. At that time of night, they all sauntered. No more business crowds, just summer dresses out in full force.

Macy's was closing at 21:00, so I rushed into an entrance and meandered through a maze until I found the women's section. The first floor was alright, but the second floor was an incredible sea of summer dresses. Whee! I set myself a budget right then and their and decided to come back on Saturday.

I passed through Times Square again on my way back to the hotel and hit the hugest, craziest crowd I'd ever seen. I can't even imagine what New Year's Eve is like.

I finally got back to the hotel at about 23:00 and had to pack up to head to the ship with one of my cabin mates. She and I were on duty the next day, Friday. How poopy. We caught the subway back to the ferry terminal and managed to catch the military bus back to the ship. Poopy, poopy, poopy to be back on ship.

The day of duty was uneventful. A day spent in uniform standing by just in case there was an emergency requiring us to traverse the helo out of the hangar. That's all aircrew stay on ship to do. And tours of the helo, if requested. Let's skip to the good stuff again.

So Saturday morning, I was ready to go into town by 8am. Carmella and I caught the train to the ferry, the ferry to Manhattan, and the subway back to the hotel.

We decided to find this military support centre where you go to get cheap tickets and a free breakfast. We got there at 10:25: breakfast ends at 10:30. Second breakfast it was! We stuffed ourselves again and browsed through their deals books. People actually stand there to help you find what you're looking for.

I could've gone to a gazillion good shows, but I had already decided to go see Wicked that afternoon. That was my one and only (expensive) Broadway show that I was set on seeing. I had actually picked up the sold-out ticket from Carmella who had bought one for someone who bowed out. Lucky me!

The Salvation Army was close by, so we hit it up. Funny thing about the American thrift stores is that they don't have change rooms because people would steal things. You had to try on clothes on top of your own clothes in front of a common mirror. AWKWARD! I found the most incredible red evening dress ever and couldn't tell if it actually fit me because it was over top my shirt. So I got it - $6!!!! Trying it on at the hotel later, I was incredulous to find that it was a practically tailored fit.

We walked by the New York public library. I love how well used all of New York's parks are.

We then headed to Macy's to do our shopping. It took me an hour to find something I was set on buying, and unfortunately not from the sale section. I lost Carmella in the store, though, and we ended up separating ways at that point. I headed to the Empire State building to see how the crowds were. As I walked through the building from the wrong entrance, I met two friendly guys standing outside of their jewellery shop hooking customers. I got talking not out of interest's sake but out of friendliness' sake, and they hooked me right in. Well, after 15 minutes of telling them I didn't want anything, I told them I was supposed to meet someone and would give a thought to the price they were offering me for a bracelet and come back briefly. I walked away for 10 minutes and realized I actually really liked that bracelet. I was stuck in shopping mode, stupid me. I went back and told them no, I wasn't going to get the bracelet. They kept cutting the price until it was something I could stomach, and then bought it. I recently wore it with the dress I had just bought from Macy's, and boy was I satisfied :)

I joined the crowds heading up the escalator to get to the top of the Empire State Building. After going through various mazes and up stairs and stuff, I decided the line-up was too long. I actually wanted to go up to the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Center), so I skipped out of the line and decided to wait until another time to go through the craziness of lineups.

I wandered town for a bit, saw the ginormous post office, Pennsylvania Station (for those who play Monopoly) and Madison Square Garden. I was aimed for Grand Central Station, though. I just had to take a subway to or from Grand Central, and I decided to take a ride into the financial sector and see ground zero.

The financial sector was obviously quiet in the evening. It almost felt abandoned. I was kinda hungry, so I stopped in a Mexican food joint where the owner told me that he owned a restaurant at a resort in Mexico and that I was very pretty and should visit his restaurant some day. If I hadn't had to desperately use the bathroom too, I would have got out of there asap, but maybe I wouldn't have been allowed to use his bathroom if he didn't think I was good looking enough for it. Thank goodness because I don't think there's such a thing as a public bathroom in the financial sector.

There was a respectful crowd milling around ground zero. The ruins of the World Trade Center had been completely cleared and all that remained was one gigantic construction site, probably the biggest I've ever seen. My feet were aching, but I decided to walk a little further and see if there was a memorial anywhere. In fact, my feet had been hurting so bad for a while by that point that I'd learned that they can only hurt so much before the pain plateaus. I repeatedly kept coming to moments of decision where the choice was to get back to the hotel and crash, or make the most of a day of my life spent in New York. I couldn't stand to waste time like that.

I got kinda lost circling around ground zero and ended up on a strangely busy street where restaurants spilled onto the sidewalks and a fruit vendor was doing a lot of business. I bought a banana from the guy, and it was so incredibly good I had to go back for more. I bought a whole bag of fruit from him to bring with me on the ship. It was the best banana I've ever tasted next to the ones in St. Lucia!

Finally, I crawled my way back to the hotel, into bed, and six hours later I was up and at it again.

The next morning's breakfast with Tasha and Carmella was at a French cafe with the most incredible real Belgian waffles ever. They were heavy with a lightly crunchy outside. That morning, I learned what Mediterranean yogurt is because Tasha got it with granola for breakfast. What a beautiful thing that stuff is.

Tasha and I headed for the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market where I scored a beautiful dress and a bunch of pashmina scarves for awesome prices. We had lunch at a place close to the Hudson River, and then headed back to the Gershwin Theatre near Broadway to meet Carmella and watch Wicked. It was amazing! The production was very well orchestrated, exactly what I expected to see in a glamorous Broadway show. I wasn't so much for the music - it wasn't catchy enough - but they had some great talent and eye-catching sets and effects to make up for it.

The last thing to do was get to the Top of the Rock. I got to the top of the Rockefeller building, shot some photos, and headed down in time to catch a subway to a church that had been recommended to me for an evening service. I was going to pull out my military ID at the subway to get a free ride, but I couldn't find it. I dug through my pockets to no avail. I was close to freaking out because military ID is one you DO NOT want to lose. I needed it to even get back on the ship without the hassle of being questioned about how, where, and when I lost my ID, not to mention having to get issued a temporary ID.

I ran out of the subway station with my nose to the ground, searching for a dropped ID. I got all the way back to the Rockefeller building and asked the guards if I could get back up because I had lost my ID. They radioed their cohorts, but nothing had been seen. So they let me go back up to look for it myself.

Funny thing is, it was almost sunset - the classic time to be at the top of somewhere high up in New York because after the sun sets, the city lights come on. I had just bypassed a gazillion people to go look for my ID.

I searched high and low for the ID, but to no avail. Just as I was heading down, it occurred to me about it being sunset. So I went back to the top and waited. There was a lightening storm happening way south of the city. I was facing in that direction when the sun set. There was complete cloud cover most of that day so I wasn't expecting a spectacular show, but an odd red glow crept over the city for about three minutes and then disappeared. Very strange.

Then the lights started coming on. Little by little, the city twinkled to life. I was looking right at the Chrysler building when it's lights came on. That was fun.

Well, I was too late to go to church. No matter, I got my fill of awe watching the lightening storm in the distance and the strange red glow at sunset.

That was it. I picked up my bags from the hotel, mailed a birthday package for my sister (better to receive it from New York, right? ;)), and lugged my gazillion pounds of stuff to the subway station, across the ferry, and onto the very last military bus headed for the jetty. *sigh* What awesomeness :)

***************

There's a lot that's happened since, but that's for another post. Ciao!

New York! - Jazz

HELP PLEASE!!! A question for the audience: what must I absolutely do or see in New York when we pull into port there for a few days next month?

Bermuda!! - Jazz

Bermuda

What a ride! I've concluded that I adore the travelling part of sailing, but the sailing itself may get old pretty fast despite my fascination this first time.

Thanks for all the prayers. Things worked out incredibly well.

Yes, our stop-over was in Bermuda :) Too cool! I've posted a bunch of photos here for you to peruse. They tell the story to some limited extent, but I'll augment it a little here. Haha, a little . . . hahahahaha!!!! . . . ahaha :) Hehe, well, read a little or read a novel, whatever floats your boat.

I'll talk about Bermuda first. That was the fun part! Sailing is its own story and needs its own section.

It took a while to actually sail into Bermuda on the day we hit port because of all the coral reefs you have to manoeuvre around. But it was a gorgeous, sunny day gliding through tropically blue water with reefs passing on either side and I couldn't have cared much how long it took.

Our ship, the HMCS St. John's docked alongside the HMCS Toronto. A brow (gangplank) was laid between the two ships and another between the Toronto and land. We have to salute the flag flying at the stern every time we step onto or off of a ship, so it was three salutes to get to land from the St. John's :P

I went for a walk with a friend in Hamilton (the port town where we docked) that first night and saw more than a few drunken Canadian sailors in the streets. Going for a walk was one way of avoiding spending time with people getting progressively more drunk as the evening progressed.

The next day was Sunday, and a few of us met up with a friend of a friend who used to go to the church I now go to in Halifax. What a small world! He introduced us to a few folks that we ended up seeing a lot of in the next few days.

Monday, I went for a bike ride with some friends. It was a disastrous first few hours. A tire blew about 5 minutes into the ride, just as I was asking God to keep us and our bikes safe and sound. I had a moment of honesty with Him, so to speak, when I realized my back tire was rumbling just as I finished praying. "Not funny, God!" I had a spare, but it busted while we were changing it. So the other guys went on ahead and promised to look for me once every hour until early afternoon at a particular landmark in St. George's, the town where we were headed. I started walking back to Hamilton, but a guy stopped to tell me that there was a store that might sell bike tires on the other side of the hill against which the road was weaving.

Taking photos as I went, it took me 20 minutes to get to this store only to find that - just as I suspected - they were only a vehicle tire store. So on I went back toward Hamilton. It took me 1.5 hours to walk back. My feet were killing me! A policeman stopped to help but only to tell me where the bike shop in Hamilton was, not to give me a ride :P The cars in Bermuda are waaaaay too tiny to carry bikes, anyway.

I bought more bike tubes, installed a new one, had lunch on the ship since it was practically across the street from the bike shop ("free" lunch vs. $18 for a typical lunch in Bermuda = easy choice), and headed on my way again.

I got about twice as far this time before I got a flat again. I really don't mean this paronomastically (look it up), but I felt really deflated as I climbed off the bike again.

I sat on an old wall behind a church (there's a photo in the album) thinking about what to do. I finally decided that I'd better try patching the tube instead of replacing it because the hole may have been created in the same place every time and a patch would create extra protection. I patched it up, pumped it up, and trepidatiously started on my way again. It seemed to hold! And it has been holding since then, too. That's it, no more throwing out tubes. I'll just patch 'em to death.

So, I got to St. George's, met up with the guys, tried a rum swizzle for the first time (YUM!!) on a beautiful patio next to the beautiful water, and we continued on our way. Gerritt graciously showed me around all the St. George's sights even though he'd already seen them all: St Peter's church, the unfinished church, Tobacco Bay, and St. Catherine's fort. We got dinner just west of St. George's at the Swizzle Inn. They had the best food in Bermuda for more reasonable prices than anywhere else I'd seen and rum swizzle by the pitcher!! Apparently you have to specifically have Black Gosling's Black Seal rum to get the swizzle just right. Note to self.

And then a long ride home in the dark along the northern side of Bermuda with a quick stop at a gas station to refuel. Fuel = Three Musketeers chocolate bar. Also yum. And then we talked about things you don't find in Bermuda that you find in Canada, which effectively kept my mind off my sore feet, sore bum and sore back. Not to mention that by this point, Gerritt was carrying my weighty backpack full of my 10lb camera. Stupid wonderful camera.

So, that was Monday!

Tuesday I was on duty. I cannot believe the people that weren't on duty who chose to stay on the ship and watch movies. We were in a foreign port that our navy rarely goes to, for goodness' sake!!! Get out there people!! Gah. Anyhow, I was stuck on ship for the day as the duty air officer. While there's a helo on board in a foreign port, the aircrew take turns doing a 24 hours shift just in case the helo requires traversing out of the hangar (see the last few photos of the album).

Wednesday, my last attempt to see the island in its entirety. I got to the scooter rental place before they opened. I grabbed my helmet, paid my gazillion bucks and scooted out onto the street without doing more than five circles around a rear courtyard to prove I could drive the thing. Scaaaaaary!! But so exciting. I got a good day-long adrenaline rush out of that.

So, off to see the world. First to the beach. I got some gorgeous shots at Warwick Beach before anyone had even set foot on the beach, except for one lone early riser. Then off to Long Beach to see if I could take some more photos. I ended up going for a quick swim in an enclosed lagoon off to the left side of the beach so that I could say I had at least gone for a swim in Bermuda. It was chilly, but I was satisfied :) Funny thing is, the water actually felt clean! I barely felt any salt stuck to me afterwards despite having dunked my whole head in and not having showered after. I met a couple who were climbing the rocks around the lagoon and had a good restaurant to recommend at my next stop.

Then on to the Royal Dockyards to see some of historic Bermuda. Our sub and the HMCS Preserver were parked there. I got a tour of the sub as they were making preparations to leave the harbour. Just in time! Then on to the historic dockyard for lunch. The couple I saw earlier was at the restaurant and had a good hamburger to recommend this time :) It was good. I wrote and mailed some postcards, perused an artists market, and was on my way again!

Last stop was the Crystal Caves. There was a drop-off point for the scooter a block away and I was coming up on my 5pm deadline. Sounded good, but it turns out the scooter place is actually closed and vacated by 5pm! I was not happy.

So, back to Hamilton. No point in crying at the door. I was heading to dinner at the house of the couple at church who'd invited us for dinner. Mmmm, chili and s'mores. But best of all, another friend from church (people became friends fast!) offered to return my scooter the next morning. I will never, ever forget that Meaghan! I hope God infinitely blesses you! It was amazing how one giant worry that was clouding the end of a great trip was completely deflated and made for a great evening in one fell swoop. Doug & Mae, thanks so much for your incredible hospitality!!

And with that, we were off to sea again.


Sailing

My roommate was awesome. She and I were quiet around each other while finding ourselves working and sleeping on unsynchronized schedules. The air det's (detachment's) weird flying schedule kept me up a few nights and sleeping during the day. I never thought I'd say it, but it's a good thing there's no windows in the cabins or I would've had a hard time getting the desperately coveted sleep during the day. Despite no window, I could still hear the waves slapping up against the ship through the many inches of steel between my bunk and the waves themselves.

Ryan and I emailed almost every day and talked on the phone once per week on average. The first and last week of the sailing, we were so close to the Nova Scotian shore that I was able to call him on my cell phone! The sat phone on the ship sounds just terrible, though. Ryan couldn't hear me half the time because of the static, although I didn't hear it all that much on my end. It made phone calls pretty undesirable, so I'm thrilled that I had such good email access. Work email, that is, not my gmail account.

I definitely got seasick, but I was graciously allowed to just rest or sleep when I was at my worst. Or get off the ship onto the aircraft. I've had problems with being airsick in the Sea King too, but this wasn't the case when I was scrambling to get off a ship where I felt way more miserable than I do when I'm airsick. Flying was relief. There were moments where I was stumbling down the darkened flats not knowing if I'd be able to keep it down before I got back to my room. I have an appointment next week with the doctor to hopefully get some Gravol prescribed before I leave on my next trip. I'll get to details of the next trip in a minute. The quasi-doctor on the ship couldn't prescribe me as aircrew stuff like that.

There were definitely some weird experiences to be had on board the ship. Walking down the flats in sea state 5 (rough seas) was actually fun when I wasn't feeling sick. I realized I'd got my sea legs when I could remain upright as I walked down the flats as the flats tilted around me. A photo of a cruise liner in sea state 5 is here. You can see the swells starting to get bigger and the waves break menacingly over the bow. Now imagine a less stable ship like our frigate tossing quite a bit in that. Here's a link to a YouTube video of a smaller Canadian ship in sea state 5, but it's pitching and rolling pretty similarly to the frigate I was on.


The next trip

Yes, I'm heading out at the end of April again, this time on the HMCS Fredericton. Including all the normal exercises, we'll be hopefully stopping in for a little party in New York called Fleet Week. Exciting!! Ryan and I will need all the same prayers as before: for good communication and strength and patience for keeping that up while separated. Actually, can I ask you to please pray for a better phone connection, too? Hearing each others' voices is a small comfort on a bad day.

I have new roommates - two this time. Please pray that we would get along. We seemed to hit it off pretty well when we met briefly last week. That was really encouraging. Heh, there's no women-only bathroom on this new ship. However, there is a shower across the hall from our cabin that I think we'll be able to effectively commandeer.

I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

Best part of this crazy, long post is that I haven't even started telling you about the Caribbean vacation Ryan and I just got back from! Life moves too fast.

Bye bye Canada - Jazz

First, I have to comment on being really, truly, honestly finished training. I can hardly believe it. Just two weeks before Christmas, I had my very last student check ride and am now a qualified tactical coordinator (TACCO - pronounced tah-co not taw-co) on the Sea King. I couldn't stop smiling for days after the check ride. But then I slept horribly because I kept dreaming about all the dangerous what-ifs of having real responsibility in the aircraft. It's torture dreaming of how much you can screw up!

And now I'm finally slipping the surly bonds of Canada and heading off on a Navy adventure next week: in other words, I'm being deployed. I'm really, really excited to be putting seven years of training to work. You say, "You exaggerate, Jazz, you didn't train for seven years straight": to which I reply that working hard or not, seven years is a very, very loooong time to spend getting to one place. Ask doctors.

Truthfully, the training I just finished in December only takes me so far in knowing how to be a TACCO. Now I have to learn to do my job while living on a ship and helping the Navy do their job on the wide open ocean. I share a small cabin with one other woman. This is a huge improvement to some of the guys who sleep 10 or more to a room. Pardon me, cabin. The Navy has some funny language. Floors are decks. Walls are bulkheads. Ceilings are deckheads. Bathrooms are just heads. Doorways are hatches. Hallways are flats. What a language.

As I was saying, I'm going to be learning a whole lot more now as I see how we and the Navy work together and how our job fits into the bigger picture of keeping the world a safe place. The kinds of things we do really do make me feel like we're making a difference. I don't know if you've seen the latest news on the HMCS St. John's Haiti food supply mission, and the HMCS Ville de Quebec protecting supply ships going into Somalia. We were under a gag order last fall during the Somalia and Haiti missions because of the election happening here in Canada. We weren't allowed to publicly discuss military issues that could sway the Canadian public to vote one way or another, good or bad. This Somalia mission was incredibly awesome, but no one was allowed to talk about it. You'll notice the article at the link above is dated January - months after the fact. And no, it wasn't possibly because they were top secret missions.

So hopefully I'll be returning in March with a tan, lots of awesome photos, and my first slew of deployment stories. I know this doesn't tell you much, but that'll come when I get back. I do need to ask you to pray for me and Ryan as we start the adventure known as being deployable. Yes, Ryan is deployable, but just less likely to be. But that's besides the point. Please ask the Lord for my and Ryan's safety as well as discernment, wisdom, courage, and honesty with each other despite the distance (encore). Pray that I get a great cabin mate, and conversely that I can be a great cabin mate for this other woman :) Pray that God's presence would be real. Pray that God would give me grace in all the ways I am capable of messing up so that I would make sound decisions and learn gracefully when I do mess up. I know, I know, with the power of God behind me, we can ask that I don't even screw up in the first place. OK, so please ask for that too. But I do realize that God can show His power in my weaknesses.

That's a lot to ask for, but there's no such thing as asking God for too much.

Memories of a snow storm - Jazz

Remember how I said I'd tell the story of how I got to Ottawa from Winnipeg back in October 2006? I've been reminded of how I haven't told it yet because we just had two previously unforecast snowstorms here in Halifax that felt a lot like the ones I drove through to get to Ottawa after nav school.

I had finished my basic navigation course in Winnipeg and been told I had possibly a year or two to wait until my next round of training. I was given permission to move to Ottawa and live with Ryan until training started, so my story begins with me having packed up my belongings in Winnipeg and preparing to leave.

I had tracked the weather the night before I left and saw a new forecast for some light rain in northern Ontario, although temperatures were going to remain above zero. No problems, I thought. Winnipeg had received a surprise dump of snow the day before I left, but it looked like it was going to warm up and melt the day I left. I wasn't going to take the route through the States because there was a very mean show storm passing over Chicago and the surrounding highways, so clearly the Canadian way looked safer.

I started out on the highway early on the dark October morning, headed east. The roads were treacherously slippery and I had to be careful with the ton of extra weight packed into my car. I turned on the radio and started listening to forecasts. It's sad driving out of a city with your favourite radio station tuned in, only to hear it fade out for the last time. It's a feeling of finality - good and bad.

I got stuck behind a slow truck on the highway, not for lack of there being another lane to pass him in but because the other lane was still covered in snow. A couple of cars came up behind us and did take the chance and pass in the other lane, so I thought I would give it a try too. I passed the truck, but not without the car doing a few unprecedented wiggles. That was enough for me: I decided I would interpret any slow vehicles in front of me as a hint from God to SLOW DOWN!!

By the time the sun started to rise, I was nearing the Manitoba/Ontario border and was feeling much safer. The roads were visibly safer, and a sun on the horizon made it feel like a sunny day ahead. I forgot that I was travelling faster than the weather, though, and soon I'd caught up to the clouds on the horizon. Dang it. And then things just got worse.

It wasn't much further to Kenora, ON, when I saw two crows fly over my car. They were still about 50' above the ground, but it made me think that a few feet lower and I would've had a bird strike - an aviation term, of cousre.

Not seconds later, I saw a bald eagle flying in from the left. Wow! I thought. I'd never seen a bald eagle in the wild so close up. Before I realized it, it swooped at my car; its right wing hit the windshield and it toppled over sideways until its body cracked against the right side of the windshield. Just the one wing was covering my entire windshield and I slammed on the brakes with no way to see outside. It felt like slow motion as the eagle slipped off the right side of the hood as the car continued moving forward with locked brakes. When I finally stopped, I looked out the back window and saw the eagle flapping around on the ground. As awfully sorry as I felt, I realized there was no way I was going to help an animal that could rip me to pieces and feed me to its young if it wanted. I had no idea who I could call to help it, so I slowly started on my way again. I was a little shaken, but thought it was kinda funny that I'd just had birdstrike in my car seconds after I'd been thinking about it anyway, and with an eagle of all things!!

So that was just the adventure of the morning. The forecasts were getting worse and worse. The original light rain was turning into light snow apparently. I still felt alright: I just had to make it to Wawa, ON. I was nearing Thunder Bay when the radio forecasts started warning of heavier-than-expected snow and dangerous driving conditions. That only spurred me on to get to Marathon before the roads got bad.

I stopped in Thunder Bay to eat lunch and fill up the gas. Just as I was paying for some more windshield washer fluid, the snow started coming down fast and I was out of there as fast as I could. I was hoping to outrun the storm at least, but that storm was brewing in an area bigger than I could drive through in one afternoon. The snow cooled down after about an hour and I thought I was safe. No such thing. As darkness fell and I passed through Marathon, ON, the snow started falling heavily again and I had to slow down to about 50km/hr. I thought about stopping in Marathon, but I only had another hour to go to Wawa: nothing difficult.

Not a half-hour beyond Marathon, the snow started falling so fast it felt like I was looking down a tunnel of snow in front of the windshield. The roads were covered in inches of snow within minutes, and I was now at 30km/hr. I promised myself I'd stop at the next motel along the way. There were still cars passing me, and at one point I could see a truck in the distance. I figured I'd let him catch up to me and than just stay in front of him in case something happened to me. I had been planning my reaction to any slips from the car - no brake, just steer - when suddenly the car jerked to the left, then to the right and continue spinning. I thought it was weirdly bright outside as I was spinning - like daylight - and then I was floating like a feather down the side of a ditch. I came to rest with the back end of the car against the far side and and my front end facing the road: perfectly level. Wow, I've just had an accident, I thought. I grabbed a flashlight I had in the front with me and jumped out to the road to wave down the truck. He passed by.

I went back to the car, put on my winter boots and coat, and headed back to the road to wave someone down. A minute later, a truck in the opposite direction stopped. He said there was a motel 5 minutes in the direction he'd just come if I could somehow get there. He said he'd stay to help wave down someone heading in that direction. The next truck in that direction also passed by. The truck driver who'd stopped for me had some angry words for that guy. The next truck did stop and gave me a ride.

As promised, the motel was 5 minutes away. There were five women working that night with a bunch of truck drivers holed up in the restaurant until the storm passed. Word was that the highway was actually closed by RCMP anyway. I borrowed the phone to call CAA. The nearest guy was in White River and couldn't get there until the morning. I asked if there were any rooms left in the motel, but there were definitely not. Looked like it would be a night spent in the restaurant with a bunch of burly guys. Thankfully the ladies working there had a swear jar! I thought that was cute and a good sign that these guys would behave themselves.

I was just getting a hot chocolate when one of the truckers tapped me on the shoulder and introduced himself as a CAA-affiliated tow truck driver: did I need a tow? Wow!! Half an hour later my car was out of the ditch and parked in the motel parking lot. No damage except a few notches in the tail pipe. Also wow!!

Back in the restaurant again, one of the ladies - Fern - pulled me aside and said there was an extra bed in their trailer behind the restaurant where they stayed while they worked there and I could bunk there for the night. I was ecstatic! I said I'd pay them the normal motel rate, but they flatly refused. "It's our work of charity," they said. God bless them! I was able to shower, eat dinner, and go to bed as if I'd had a place to stay reserved for me all along. The ladies even let me call Ryan long distance to tell him what had happened.

Honestly, I wouldn't have had a place to sleep if I hadn't ended up in the ditch and those ladies hadn't felt sorry for me.

The next morning, I left as it began to get light, but only to find the roads were even more treacherous than before. There were car tracks in the snow that had just frozen into ice and I could do little more than follow tracks or risk sliding off the road. Creeping along at 30km/hr, vehicles passed me without a pause, but we all ended up in a big lineup just outside White River. After sitting around for an hour or so, I decided to follow the rebels driving on the wrong side of the road to get into town. The highway ahead was obviously closed and it looked like I may as well gas up and eat up until it opened.

I stopped at a tiny convenience store where I sat and talked with the elderly owners for a while before leaving in search for a phone to call Ryan. The elderly couple were from the Ukraine, I think, and the guy had been a miner all his life. They had moved to Canada and bought this little store as a retirement thing but were concerned with business not being very good. After calling Ryan, I headed back to the store to get gas before getting in the lineup again. The guy insisted on pumping the gas for me, and then I'm certain he charged me less. I didn't realize it until I looked at my receipt later. God bless him too :)

Traffic started moving at about 1pm, but not for long. I got parked behind an RV and settled in to wait. The couple owning the RV got out for a walk and actually stopped at my car to have a conversation. I told them I was really tired and would they mind running back to wake me up when traffic started moving again? "Sure, no problem!" they said. I fell asleep pretty quickly, but a police siren got to me before the couple did when traffic started moving. A police car was cruising past the lineup to make sure everyone was ready and, seeing that I was asleep, elected to just turn his siren on rather than knock on my window. Gah!!

So, 2pm and I was on my way again. This time the sun really was shining and promised to for a while yet. The forecast, however, said more snow tonight. I was already at least six hours behind schedule and getting to Ottawa before midnight didn't look possible.

As I hit North Bay, the snow started again. I raced through the first few flurries and got out the other side of it no problem. It was about 10pm or so and I hadn't had dinner yet. I stopped at a gas station and grabbed the first sausage roll I saw. The snow was starting to fall there, too, so I raced out to the car and got back on the road. The sausage roll turned out to be disgusting, but I didn't care. What I did care about was the fact that I'd forgotten to gas up at the gas station and it was getting near 11pm, time for gas stations to close up in sparsely populated areas like the one I was driving through.

I found an Esso that was clearly closed, but I was desperate. I stopped at a pump and tried the buttons. No luck, of course. I saw a guy walking down the street in my direction, and he veered off to approach me. "Any open gas stations around?" I asked. "Not in the direction you're headed," he replied. "I'm just trying to get to Ottawa tonight," I said. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "there's a gas station about 45 minutes in that direction! I thought because your car was parked in the opposite direction that you were headed west not east." He gave me directions to an all-night gas station and I headed on my way, hoping the drops of gas in my tank would hold out for 45 minutes.

If that guy hadn't given me directions, I would never have known where to turn to get to this gas station. The turn I made wound around a hill and the gas station was on the other side of it. No way would I have known there was an open gas station there. That guy was completely a God-send. I was able to call Ryan, too, and let him know where I was at.

By 2am I was finally on a familiar inlet to Ottawa. By 2:30am, I was pulling into the driveway of our house. Ryan had stayed up and met me at the door. I cried. What a way to get home.

Still on course - Jazz

Yep, still on course, and another month to go. The reason I'm writing now, though, is that at least there's one less obstacle between me and the end of the course. Today was my tactics "check box", as we call it: it's a check ride but done in a simulator of sorts, which we call the box. And I passed! I'm feeling mentally tired but happy in a sleepy sort of way.

The next phase will be learning to do search and rescue. I'm really excited because this is a part of the job that is really rewarding.

I can confirm that yes, after this course is done I will be deployable. I'm quite intrigued to see what life living on a ship is like: cramped quarters, lack of privacy and all. Travelling the world by ship will definitely be exciting, although I hear people tire of some of the ports we visit because they've been there so many times. Funny to think that I could have favourite restaurants staked out in different parts of the world. Likely time frame for my first deployment is within the first three months of the coming new year.

Ryan arrives this weekend! Hooray!!! I was given the keys to our new house yesterday but haven't even peeked in there yet because of all this studying. Our furniture was also packed up yesterday in Ottawa and should arrive here early next week. The new house didn't come with appliances, so I'm excited to play with our new ones that arrive with the furniture :D No more oven that's too small for the space it's given and food gets dropped down the edges all the time; but how thankful we were to get it when Ryan first moved in back 2.5 years ago (thanks Kevin and Mary!)!

Christmas: we will be coming to Vancouver for the Christmas holidays - hopefully arriving in Comox on the military flights on 21 Dec and getting into town on the 22nd. Let me know if you're in town, too, and would like to get together! We should be there until the 29th or 30th.

Ciao for now!

Nocturne: Art at night - Jazz

Maybe I can actually write shorter entries that don't take days to read, eh Tavia?

Just thought I'd mention my outing to Nocturne last night. It's Halifax's first and hopefully annual evening art show, all for free. There were something like 45 venues around the city with a free shuttle to get you around. We did what we could walking - 'twas a little chilly - and found we'd had a pretty full evening by the time midnight rolled around having only seen five or six venues.

My definite favourite was the crystal factory where crystal is manufactured completely by hand. I never cared much for crystal, much less crystal with patterns etched into it. However, after watching the craftsman at work and realizing the skill it takes to create the various pieces, I'm impressed. Everything is freehand, so no one piece is exactly like the others. If you buy machine-made crystal at a store, they ensure every piece is exactly alike. On the contrary, the craftsmen prides themselves in having the handmade difference in each piece, if you look closely enough, that is: the differences are barely visible.

I'm sure a lot of you can agree that once you meet the artist, their art becomes even better than at first glance, which is another reason to enjoy the crystal so much more now. The guys working at the shop were great fun and the Irish accents on some of them just added to it. It's hair-raising to see one guy pull the molten glass out of the oven and lift it over the lap of another so that the other can guide the dripping gob onto his shaping tool. One wrong move and . . . well, let's hope he's happy with the number of kids he has now.

And guess what I forgot on an awesome night like that? My camera, of course. Gah!! I hate when I forget it. It's like walking around with a missing limb.