A medium time ago I worked for the navy on an Aircraft Carrier. I was an aviation ordnance man, we dealt in bombs, guns, pyrotechnics, rockets, missiles, and torpedoes. But mostly we dealt in bombs.
WESTPAC is a portmanteau of "Western-Pacific." It's also a six month cruise around the world the Navy and Marines take. It was WESTPAC for us because our boats port of call was in San Diego, it was probably named something else for boats parked elsewhere.
Middle eastern terrorists blew up a couple buildings with airplanes prior to my first cruise. The Navy responded by launching every boat they owned, packed to the brim with every weapon they could find towards the middle east. Chief said our orders were to bomb the shit out of the middle east until somebody told us who did it.
We packed land based squadrons and their airplanes, helicopters, bombs, and guns on the boat anywhere they would fit, the process was a billion dollar game of Tetris. After everything was stowed the boat became a cave city. My first port call was in an Arab emirate city named Dubai.
Dubai had been selling us gas for a long time and knew how the Navy would respond to what happened, so they called immediately afterwards to say "It wasn't me," and to come hang out in Dubai when we got a break from bombing the middle east. The Navy took them for their word, we stopped in Dubai whenever we found ourselves in the area.
The day before port call Chief lectured us on what they referred to as "Amateur Night." They called it that because salty old crabs knew exactly what E-nothings would run toward the second our feet touched dirt, because they had ran toward the same thing thirty years ago.
I started playing Pokemon Silver during the cruise. My favorite part of silver was the new internal clock feature that kept track of the current time and day of the week. Besides port call it was the only way I stayed aware of time or day out to sea. I captured Raikou while chief was yelling something about discipline when representing country, service, and unit. I thought it was a big deal at the time because Raikou was legendary.
Shore leave rule required each sailor to have a buddy tag along with him just in case one of them went to jail, but everyone I knew already had a buddy or had to work the day I was off, so I just hung in the general area of other people that were leaving the boat until I was far enough from it to head out my own way.
I hopped into a cab and asked the driver to drop me off at a place where I could find booze or chicks or any other type of ill shit he could think of that locals don't get to see. He dropped me off at a waterpark, almost every single person in the waterpark was from my boat. I was pissed.
I mitigated the disappointment of seeing everyone I was trying to get away from on dry land by drinking anything alcoholic that wandered into my atmosphere as fast as I could. Turns out everybody else on the boat was executing the same plan.
Two hours later we all were totally sloshed. We were cannon balling on kids training with floaties in the big pool, threatening and harassing anyone with something to say about how we were living, and then with all other harassment targets exhausted we turned on each other, adult Navy and Marines personell in bathing suits fist fighting in waist high wading pools. We were party boy locusts.
I had somehow stumbled near the Wavepool and instantly convinced myself that it would be child's play for me considering my skateboarding background. I figured boogie boarding was basically surfing which was basically skateboarding. I would hop in there, do a couple fraggleflips or hang ten, or whatever they call their tricks that I was going pull off eazy because I was drunk. And when it comes to action sports the secret is never take time to think about what you are doing, because thinking will make you kick out.
I was gonna put on brief a quick swagger seminar to get juices loose in the nether regions of every chick in sight, then take my harem to a secure area for a bit of guts spelunking. After about an hour of waiting in line I hopped in the curl and immediately lost the board, then my bathing shorts. As I spun uncontrollably in the pipe I caught brief glances of them floating in the air.
A fleeting thought mentioned I was buck naked and spinning around the wave in a country with incredibly severe indecency laws, but other than that I didn't think much for the rest of the day. A lifeguard had to guide me out of the wave with a hook, and when I stood to flat ground I bowed toward my silently shocked audience. Although the performance wasn't all it could have been as it was hella cold in the water and a breeze had set in before I got out. Not an excuse, a fact.
Park security tackled me and held me in detainment until the military police came to get me. I spent the rest of that port call on restriction. But didn't mind so much as the boat was finally quiet, and I had all the time in the world to level my Raikou.
