Different but similar

 Wow, a lot happened in terms of my staid boring job of being bottom bitch and chief bottle washer on the water. Unexpected things happened and here I am 4 days later in Philadelphia, where I started for this company and spent my first 2 years. I haven't worked here in a decade or more... and I'm kind of enjoying it 

       Wednesday... was a mess.  It was so bad, the day went from being a miserable experience to funny to fine. Ironically, once I embraced the suck, the suck embraced me. 

     So I have an 0700 taxi arranged to pick me up from the decent Brooklyn hotel we crash at for crew change. We're expected to arrive to work ready to work so the company stows us in a hotel the night before crew change. 

 At 0650 the crew scheduler calls, tells me to cancel my taxi. There's no berth for me, she accidentally double-booked me for a spot that was already filled, and told me to stand by an hour or two. 

       The main driver here is that the HQ is headed for 2 months of shipyard work, where she'll be uncrewed the whole while. I am presently homeless, without a berth. 

     Already caffeinated, I pulled out my book (Nick Cole & Jason Anspaugh's 'Gods and Legionnaires') and sat tight as instructed. About 90 mins later I was told I would be Riding Over as a supernumerary on our biggest pushboat, basically being Johnny On The Spot for a week. 

 I moved my Very Considerable' pile of gear and food, since I'll be living out of my seabag for a while and anything I leave on the HQ will be stolen by the shipyard workers, and put most of it in storage on the tug. I volunteered to do some of the cooking and went to the grocery store with the Able Seaman, who doubles as cook, and we bought 2 weeks worth of groceries, planning out a few meals along the way.  We returned with his car packed with boxes of grub and I joined in in stowing it all. 

      It looked like a fun week. These guys were all friends and all of us, every one, were 50ish and grew up working class in the northeast. I talked more in the 2 hours I was there than I've done in years. We talked about everything gen X'ers talk about. Classic cars, joint pain, guys who we all knew who died, etc.  Good times. 

 And then the southern fleet crew scheduler called me... they needed me in Philadelphia, and could I get in a taxi right now, ASAP? 

    So that's bag drag number 3?  I load my mountain of crap in the taxi, and by then I am in a truly shitty mood and I can feel my pulse in my fingers and my ears, so I KNOW my blood pressure is jacked up.  Just... shitty luck. Seniority counts for nothing where I work, but I knew that. 

 My car driver is an African guy. I've never met him, but a few minutes after we leave he puts on some African gospel music in his home language. And this isn't the classics; no Abide With Me, no Amazing Grace... no, this is modern African synth pop gospel... And it's not pleasant to me.   But he's cheerfully singing along, quietly, and having a nice time, and I'm not going to fuck with a dude wants to commune with his maker. 

 Then, the drumming. 

 Yeah, he started drumming on the steering wheel. And singing. To a guy like me in that moment, absolutely pregnant with the anticipation of a bad time, it was like a knife in my ear. 

      At that point things went from shitty to a little funny. It was just such an ass-chapping morning, so truly trying in terms of little shitty things and being moved around like a fuckin' unwanted kid,  nothing at all truly bad, just mosquito bites to my soul... that it made me laugh a bit... and like that... I was ok. 

   2 hours later I was on a launch boat in Philly, to get to my assignment.   Crew change wasn't actually carried out on the pilot ladder, but the offgoing guy and I had our pre-transfer briefing while passing parcels and bags back and forth up and down a rope from the launch to the barge. 

         Turns out, though,  the other guy on here for the week is my buddy African Eric, who, along with my partner Big E, is in the running for the World's Nicest Man contest.  Eric and I have worked together several times and it's always smooth. He's enormously competent and a very positive person.  So big plus there. 

 And... I haven't worked the Delaware River/Chesapeake Bay area in about a decade I think. Can't remember. I had forgotten that this is a more pleasant environment to work in than NY harbor.  The ports and anchorages are much further apart than those of NY, where the average steam between load and discharge is about 35 mins. Here, it's 2 hours, and can run up to 8 hours.

 Our Philly fleet is having the same issues we do in NY. Too much work, not enough vessels. Still, the longer runs I find very refreshing. 

I watched the birds flying by today, out on deck. I haven't done that in years. 

      I may have not wanted to come here but I am glad I did. I'm still plenty busy, but it's humane here. 

Turnaround

 I got 4 nights at home only. So that sucked. 

   I had some very nice and relaxing moments. Not, perhaps, as many as I wanted or needed but they were there. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and my son all took some time off so we'd have a few whole days together, which we took advantage of, right up until the halfway point where things went to hell. 

 It was good while it lasted. Another death, and loss of a major contract in my wife's business, which means a financial hit. I'm glad we were all together, anyhow. Mutual comfort, mutual support. 

    All my bitching, I'm still aware that I've had it easier than many. I should be rolling with the punches more than I have been. I think that with shitty outcomes and increasing stress having risen slowly and steadily for a long while, my emotional reserves are being emptied, as things have more been like death by 1000 cuts than any particular major trauma. 

       Well, it's a terrible idea financially. But I'm taking time off starting 3 weeks from now.  Marathon, not sprint. I gotta get my shit together a bit. Tired of being a pill. 

Anyhow, to focus on the positive, I am headed to work, to earn, still vertical, and looking at the grass from the top of the stems, not the roots.    Well enough.

Airport

 So I'm at an airport burger joint, and I'm going home. 

     I'm going home a day late. I was already working a week of OT when I got word I had to attend some refresher training in-house at mh employer's NY offices. 

      Surprisingly, it was a good class. Apparently I needed refresher training, and it was a good way to have an office staffer who HAD to listen to our complaints, and being sailors, we always have many many complaints. 

       So I'm not thrilled to be going home for just 4 days and a wakeup but it is what it is. I'm not going back to the HQ when I get back either; she's headed to the shipyard for her 20-year maintenance cycle. I'll be whoring myself out for the next 2 months. 

    As  for what I've been doing, it's been a struggle. I've been pretty unhappy of late.  Hopefully going home will help. 

 Hell with it. 

Science lesson of the day: popular lies

  'The Amazon rainforest is being clearcut at a dangerous rate." 

  "The Amazon Rain Forest is truly the lungs of planet earth."  

      Both of these are stupid lies, obvious to anyone with a modicum of education in science. 

    The Amazon, through photosynthesis, does affix carbon dioxode and produce oxygen...during the day. 

 At night of course the Amazon CONSUMES massive amounts of oxygen during cellular respiration, which goes on 24/7, unlike photosynthesis, so much of that oxygen made during the day gets used back up, leaving a modest surplus net gain.  If we clearcut the amazon completely, the loss of oxygen cycling would actually  be fairly small.  

    The Amazon produces about 16% of all LAND-BASED oxygen cycling.  But land only makes up about 29% of the earth's surface. So take all that land mass, add up the plant biomass there, and figure out the offsets for deforestation and Reforestation.

     Reforestation is a thing too.

 New England, for example, is being reforested at a shocking rate. Once America's Bread Basket, its' forests are criscrossed with old stone farm walls where wheat fields grew.  If you project ahead at the rate of reforestation in New England, by the year 2550, parking lots will cease to exist. 

   Enter phytoplankton- single-celled plants in the ocean, which covers about 71% of the earth's surface. Phytoplankton are the true lungs of the earth... and phytoplankton are doing great, thank you. 

   The rich green conferva soup of the ocean in the boreal and temperate latitudes, the spaces between arctic/antarctic and the tropics... that green seawater is rich in phytoplankton. In the tropics, where nutrients are tied up in the land, there are still phytoplankton, in more modest but massive numbers. 

       Globally, we have macroalgae- seaweeds. The Sargasso Sea comes to mind. It's growing, btb. Gets stinky when it washes ashore but that's a blessing of nature, just not for our delicate noses.  All that carbon and nutrients waiting to be released in the neotropics where free carbon and free nutrients are a bit scarce. 

   Globally we also have cyanobacteria, the smallest living single-celled plant on earth, often called blue-green algae. Both free in the water column and growing on EVERYTHING wet, even on land too. 

  You know those dark stains on rocky outcrops? Blue-green algae.  And it's an oxygen-making POWERHOUSE.  A conservative guess is that it alone produces HALF of all global oxygen, even before you get to the algae, diatoms and other oxygen-makers in the ocean. 

       So don't buy into the panic.   We're gonna be ok.  I like a clean, less-developed earth for my own quality of life, myself, but the poor ass Brazilian Indios are big fans of  not dying of famine or tropical diseases in their own backyard, so let the poor naked bastards sell off some land and buy some goddam shoes and address the Hierarchy of Needs if they want. 

    Oh, fun exception to the plants sucking down oxygen at night... the pothos plant.  They have oxygen storage capability- they pick up extra during the day and use it at night, but always release a surplus. 

      I really am a font of useless info. 

 But seriously, get a pothos.  They do a good.job of trapping dust and processing some nasty co ntaminants in the air.  We had one on the HQ for over 10 years- it circled the perimeter of the galley twice over, must have been 80+ feet overall.  Killed us when it finally died. The jungle motif was a treat. 

 

Being Eastern European Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

 No, this isn't about world events, fitle notwithstanding. I mean it IS related though... 

       I finally got part of what I've been looking for, a job that wasn't fucked up. 

    Part of it went right, which is fhe first time in 20 days thst has happened. 

We loaded oil for 2 seperate ships the other day. The oil for first ship I pumped off myself, yesterday, and praise be, it went right and it went smooth.   Finally. 

     Tonight for part 2?   Naw, it's fucked up. Back to normal for what normal has been this tour.

          So tonight we run shorter 'dog' watches, where we cut them short to rotate our schedule. As I'm entering my final week aboard, it's my turn to take the back watch, 6pm to 6am.  

           Tonight's ship is an oil tanker, and the engineer kept calling for pump throttle changes, which is annoying and not normal but also not dangerous, so... so be it.  But then he kept calling for shut downs- not for emergencies but for whatever reason. After the 3rd time I refused to start back up until we had a heart-to-heart, where I noted that in our paperwork package he signed a document saying that he would provide a 10-minute early warning for non-emergency stops and starts.  Aside from safety issues related to that, I told him that my pumps would likely lose prime if we shut down while transferring the last 15% of he oil.  

 Less than 10 mins after our talk, he did it again, and sure enough, my pump lost prime, so now I have a foot of warm oil that will turn cold and solid in that tank, and will take a week or more to get rid of over the next few jobs, fucking with my volumes. 

       So, shit happens and safety first... we all want to keep the oil in the tanks, mine and his,  and while I'm positive this was just an anxious engineer's timidity and unprofessional behavior, I'm not going to bet my career on it. He says shut down, I shut down, and we can unfuck an inconvenience a lot easier than we can an accident.

   Here's the thing, though, and my point, finally. I don't think I have ever heard an Eastern European person apologize.  They're stereotypically very arrogant, at least in my trade. Not all, of course. But many. Most, even... and perhaps that's me. Cognitive bias, bigotry maybe, I dunno. And the language thing; when  speak without use article, modifier or preposition in English, it make sound asshole. 

  But typically when I ask for one of them to do something or not do something, the answer I get is that it is all my fault. 

 Tonight, for example, when I lost prime tonight , Ivan says 'This you problem, no my. You buy this pump. Is bad pump.' 

    I was good about not fussing at him... but not good enough.  My internal monologue was all, 'say nothing. Be professional. Anything you say will not help.' 

 So I said 'Well, you no can get more oil. This you problem, no mine, hoss.' 

 When annoyed, I like calling people 'hoss.'  I don't know when that started.  

 I'm glad I didn't yell, though, or swear.  The way things have been, if I started, I maybe wouldn't stop. Down deep I know it's not worth it. My recent distemper was here long before this trashbag came into my life and of all the pain in the balls people I've dealt with, this guy's merely the most recent. 

 Gotta stay positive. 

   Edit:   Now after the job is done and we are all.fast at a dock to wait for our next loading berth to open up, things are not as bleak.  

    I've been getting some really high quality tugboat deckhands helping us out at arrival and departure. Sadly, these kids are mostly working for 3rd party tugboat companies, but still it's good to see and good for the workplace culture I try to keep on here.  

 My outlook has just been so dark lately. It's beyond being in a brown study. I am downright down, after so many unsatisfying days... and so a bright, friendly and interested hard working Ordinary Seaman on board is a breath of.fresh air. 

     When we sailed away from the tub o' surly bohunks earlier, by the time we cast off the last line, the deckhand had cracked a joke and broken the tension.  An hour later, after we were all fast, I showed him a couple of tricks and good practices with marlinespike seamanship; using the 'handedness' of the lay of the line, stovepiping vs traditional making off of lines, how to ID the snapback and safe zones of any line under tension, just dumb little things thst will make him better and that were taught to my idiot ass long ago... and in doing that I could feel the tension headache slipping away. 

 Still, I'm glad my day's done... for values of done. I get 8 hours free than back at it.  Dog watch days can be long days. 

 

These are my clutching pearls

 I gotta stop uding this blog as my ombudsman/fainting couch/tear-stained dear diary.  Every post lately has been about who/what failed me this time and how I heroically saved the day/bore the burden with masculine stoicism. 

     To stop my bitching, it would be really, really nice if I could have a cargo that loaded and pumped off well, or a day at home where my day didn't end with existential dread or 'Fuck it, I'm too tired to care any more today.' 

    Nothing yet, but I'm trying to find that day. Sure wasn't yesterday and today my day was already ruined by 0435 when I walked into the galley to caffeinate, eat a handful of blood pressure meds and vitamins, and B says to me 'Fuck, man...' 

         Maybe tomorrow. Sorry for all the whining. 

   

Upping my game

 So this morning there's some training to do. 

        For assorted reasons, mostly legit, I have to do some supervisor training for booze and drug, as well as sexual harassment policy awareness.  This seems to be a once every year or two thing. 

  Drunks on boats are pretty common. Adding oil to the mix makes it a big no-no.   Drugs too. And with all the weed legalization going on, it's a huge issue. Guys pissing hot for weed during testing has massively increased in rate and it's still illegal AF for anyone working in transportstion.  

   Honestly that's a mixed bag. We've lost some good young guys with shitty impulse control over that, but we've also lost some absolute fucking idiots and scumbags, too, so I'm cool with testing. 

           The sexual harassment thing is a bit more academic for me. I'm fortunate to have never seen it in person, and I've worked with a few female mariners, most of whom were VERY competent... thst being said, I've also been aware of harassment towards women I HAVEN'T worked with but whom I know somewhat, and not even all that long ago, and it's ALWAYS been absolutely real and unjustifiable.  

     As I wrote above, though, it's a bit academic for me, and there's a story involved.

   About 10-12 years ago, we had a female tugboat deckhand who took the classes and got the endorsement from the Coast Guard to be raised to tankerman and start turning valves with us in the Retard Circus (the tankermen pool). 

    Thing is, this girl was a pretty and young latina, which shouldn't matter but matters. 

         Having no female tankermen at the time, a young and competent girl would be a real feather in my company's cap, so the powers thst be asked B and I to train her. 

 B said Fuck No, on the spot, his exact words being 'No, I'd like to stay married, thanks.' I said something along the lines of 'Yeah, my wife ain't having that. I need to stay married more than I need this job.'  

     What was cool about the issue was that the fleet manager absolutely understood. 

    Sure enough, she was trained elsewhere and later married her trainer. She was a good catch, he was smart to snatch her up. 

        There IS a difference between a tugboat and an oil barge. At times we're isolated and there's only 2 of us on board. At those times we have only each other for mutual support. 

      When I told Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife (who is NOT the jealous type) that we were asked and said no, she responded calmly, texting me a picture of a kitchen knife and the words 'Eu viu seu cortar sua pinto, voce e meu.' (I'll cut your dick off, you are mine). 

   Anyhow, I had already said no, and it's nice to know she was concerned.  

    Now I joke, and of course spending 2 hours watching videos is and answering dumb questions in a test at the end is brutal. You can't speed things up. I don't have attention issues, but my brain works fast. I either know something or I don't.  Making me wait 45 seconds between individual multiple-choice questions means 4-5 seconds of thinky, 40 seconds of no thinky. It's cancer. My mind doesn't work like that when I'm not engaged in drudgery... and this is drudgery. I'm not bragging. I read fast and think fast and not being able to have a reasonable pace is a millstone around my neck. It makes me resent the subject being considered, which is dead nuts opposite to what the goal is. 

       I work really diligently at not working with people. I get annoyed with everyone regardless of sex. I am not bigoted in my hate. So, admire me. 

   As for booze, yeah, I'm really into going home alive and with a job to come back to. If there's a booze-related issue aboard, there's already been a clusterfuck and I resent anyone bringing MORE clusterfucks aboard. We're brimming to the top already.  Making clear that booze and drugs aboard will result in them being thrown over the side while they're still in your corpse's pockets is a fairly simple but effective strategy. 

   Also, for legal reasons, that's a joke. 

 Also also, I don't like strangers aboard, which is an additional safety-enhancing strategy. 

 I had a junkie sternman when I was still a lobsterman.. this was maybe 2004?  Asshole fooled me, right up until him and his trashbag baby mama nodded off at home while giving their baby a bath and killed the poor little bastard.  Ever since, I've had no tolerance for shitheads. I think that's why my go-to emotion is anger when the issue pops up at work. Get fucked up on your own time, you know?