...and back on board

 I got back onto the HQ about 2 hours ago. 

   So, I had a good week away. I absolutely didn't expect that. 

           I was pretty annoyed at getting ganked (pulled off the HQ, sent to a different bunker barge), and a green-as-baby-shit tankerman put to keep my seat warm. 

  Truth is, normally they need just one senior tankerman aboard. B, Big E and I are all very senior, and there is always 2 of us here under normal circumstances. This lets the company give us fucked up weird cargo orders and sensitive jobs to do, as everyone needs to sleep sometime, and when oddball things pop up, the senior guy has to get his ass up and ride herd on the junior during complex operations and that's fine... unless it's a daily thing. A (presumably) older adult can only operate at 100% for so long on days of badly broken sleep. Thus, we get the odd jobs... but also by choice, as the upside of having so many jobs not be straightforward, we have a deep reserve of talent aboard, and our individual strengths vary, so the calming presence and exacting detail guy (B), the deep seamanship and operational knowledge guy (me), and the can-do guy who keeps the shoreside support people from hating us (Big E) together all combined makes for a very efficient workplace. The fact that all of us are close friends now also has a deep impact on our workplace and our ability to sustain good performance even as life intrudes, as it will and does. 

  So, yeah, I'm happy to be back on the HQ. 

       Having a trainee aboard is a massive pet peeve of mine. I absolutely DO. NOT. LIKE. having a trainee. It's been 7-8 years since the last time, when B and I made it clear we weren't willing to train for all the bribes in the world. Being alone a lot is a MASSIVE job perk here, and is in the top 5 reasons why I stay here rather than sail internationally, which I prefer. 

 I love the solitude I get. Deeply. Having a trainee aboard on the bunker barge I was working on is brutal, spacewise. The quarters are tiny, smaller than the HQ, as they have a single large bunkroom aboard and the galley is very narrow. Big head (bathroom), though. Pretty posh.  That meant that when I was off watch, the trainee would come in after I was asleep to go to bed himself in the shared bunkroom. 

   To my good fortune and his credit, the trainee  didn't snore, didn't talk in his sleep, didn't fart too much, and basically was a good roommate. I'd never sleep through him coming and going, as my bunk obviously was next to the door, where I could be up and out in seconds. 

...and... with all that,  it was a good week. The trainee was a sponge, asked great questions, was motivated to learn, and was good company, with that blessed but rare gift of discreet discernment, where he knew without me hinting that it was a good time for quiet here and there. We could sit in comfortable silence, which is an unusual social skill in my opinion, but deeply welcome. 

 Plus, the barge was 2 weeks out of the shipyard wherein it had had a major maintenance period. Mechanically it was perfect, the quarters were freshly painted in a tasteful way and the decks were overlaid with an epoxy floor that was well-applied and colored in speckles that had a pleasant black, blue, white and gray mix.  Very comfortable, if teeny. 

   So, here I am, back to where I want to be if I'm gonna be at work. 

Perspective

 I need to count my blessings that I have minor things to bitch about like getting ganked onto another assignment, and having no hot water on board

   Yesterday someone 3 miles away blew their oil barge up, one DRT, 2 injured.  

Ganked!

 I'm fine, everything's fine. The small, shitty part of me wants to make a list of everything I don't like right now. 

 Other than having to take a cold shower last night, I'm not gonna make that list. The guy who fucked me over so I had to get ganked off the HQ and run one of her sisters also didn't report that they had a dead water heater, and I was sweaty and dirty enough that I wasn't going to be satisfied taking a birdbath at the sink, so cold shower it was. 

 I haven't done that in a while.  It was unpleasant. My testicles tried to go back in time.

But, I went to bed with a washed ass, so... victory?

 Anyhow we're working on that today. I have a trainee on here so I have him straddling both watches, which gave me a couple of quiet hours this morning, which was lovely. Good kid. Motivated. Has a baby on the way. 

 I'm elbow deep in the day now, anyhow. Focusing on the positives. Trying to, anyhow. 

Still alive, still here

 I'm supposed to go home tomorrow but I agreed to do some OT. The job I agreed to do fell through last minute and I'm left with another job to do, which is a bit of a shit sandwich. 

 I'm not in a writing mood as yet. 

A repoast

 The more you can poke holes in any hypothesis, the more shitty it is. 

   So, you can poke multiple holes in the theory of evolution, and while not as easy, also do the same for the theory of gravity. 

 This does not mean that the base concepts are wrong, but that our understanding is weak, likely not fully accurate, and badly in need of improvement or at least, direct testing. 

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a soap bubble of a hypothesis that absolutely does not yet meet the stringent definition of a theory. 

 Doesn't mean it's wrong, again, but sure as shit doesn't mean it's right, when virtually no aspect of it stands up to examination, and claimed core proofs which can't be tested... which means there's faith involved. 

 Now, being summat religious, I've got faith and I ain't afraid to use it. But that's me. 

    Do you? Proponents of AGW certainly are exercising some degree of faith. For my part, I'm still withholding judgement on the whole thing but I'm open to either possibility.  I've got no beef with people who want to operate on a precautionary principle, so long as the human cost, or cost to humans, is low. So far, with carbon taxes, EPA permitting and Pournelle's Iron Law ruling over the moneychangers involved, it's been ruinously harmful. 

 Separately, the religious aspect of AGW:  it's insane and retarded, a cult of faith-based performative science where the priests are the most prolific profiteers of the movement... which is corruption at its' finest.

  Anyhow, please enjoy the following Historical sermons from the Church of Environmental Scientoady: 

From author/apologist. John C. Wright: 

1. 1958 New York Times: Ice-free Arctic within 70 years.

2. 1967 Salt Lake City Tribute, quoting Paul Ehrlich: Global famine by AD 1975. Involuntary mass sterilization needed to curtail population growth.

3. 1970 Boston Globe, quoting James Lodge: Ice Age by the 21st Century.

4. 1971 Washington Post, quoting NASA: Ice Age within 50 years. 

5. 1972 Brown University: Global climate deterioration due to Global Cooling.

6. 1974 Guardian: Ice Age coming fast.

7. 1974 Time Magazine: New Ice Age.

8. 1978 New York Times: No end in sight to cooling trend.

A year later, the same paper with the same somber urgency, was reporting the opposite.

9. 1979 New York Times: Global climate catastrophe. Ice-free Arctic within 70 years.

10. 1982 New York Times, quoting UN: Environmental catastrophe by AD 2000.

11. 1988 AP: Global Warming: Maldives drowned by rising sealevel within 30 years (AD 2019).

12. 1989 San Jose Mercury, quoting UN: Global Warming: nations drowned AD 2000.

13. 2000 Independent: Snowfalls a ‘thing of the past’ in England within ‘a few years’.

14. 2001 Albuquerque Journal, quoting George Hurt: Climate-change to kill New England maple syrup industry.

15. 2004 Guardian, quoting secret Pentagon report: Climate change will trigger nuclear war, submerge major European cities, Britain ‘Siberian’ by AD 2020.

16. 2006 AP, quoting Al Gore: Greenhouse gas. Point of no return in 10 years (AD 2016).

17. 2007 New York Times, quoting UN: Point of no return by 2012.

18. 2007 Canwest News: Ice-free Arctic by AD 2010 or 2015.

19. 2007 AP, quoting NASA: Ice-free Arctic by AD 2012.

20. 2007 BBC: Ice-free Arctic before AD 2013.

21. 2008 Xinhua (Chinese News), quoting Norwegian official: Ice-free Arctic.

22. 2008 New Scientist Magazine, quoting director National Snow and Ice Data Center: Ice-Free Artic by AD 2008 (that year).

23. 2008 National Geographic, quoting scientist: Ice-Free Artic by AD 2008 (that year).

24. 2008 AP, quoting NASA: Ice-Free Artic by AD 2013 to 2018.

25. 2009 USA Today, quoting Al Gore: Ice-Free Artic by AD 2014.

Note that on or about this time, circa 2010, the Glacial National Park erected signs warning that all glaciers would be melted entirely away by AD 2020

26. 2012 Australian: Snow gone by AD 2020.

27. 2013 Guardian: Ice-Free Artic by 2015, will trigger methane catastrophe.

28. 2017 Sydney Morning Herald: Climate Changes to curtail Australia’s ski industry.

29. 2018 Forbes, quoting Harvard University: Ice-Free Artic by AD 2022. Chance of any permanent ice remaining is “essentially zero.” (Despite these odds, 5.6 million square miles remain.)

30. 2018 Greta Thunberg, autistic schoolgirl, quoting ‘Top Climate Scientist’: Humans to go extinct if Climate Change not fixed by AD 2023. All humanity to perish unless fossil fuel use stopped within five years.

31. 2021 LA Times: No Snow in California by “sooner than you think.”

32. 2022 Bloomberg: End of Snow threatens to upend 76 million American lives.

Please note that in AD 2020, Glacial National Park (see above) removed the signs predicting the glaciers clearly looming above the sightseers were to have had vanished by now.

This is painful

 My employer has started throwing online training videos at us, in the same way spaghetti is thrown at a ceiling. 

 I get it, they get pressured to prove they're improving the retards by the people who hold the hoops that they have to jump through. 

     Of course we all know that if this bullshit was really important, they'd send a real live human to teach it, so... the effort taken is proportional to the effort given, if you understand me. 

     The exception being the annual sexual harassment training videos. 

    So, our industry has a BRUTAL problem with the few women out here getting harassed. No reason to sugarcoat it, it's a real thing, right up to rapes occuring.

    This year the training videos and quizzes and such is about 3x longer than last year's. And it's a shitshow. The sexual harassment part is fine, but they've expanded into microaggressions, marginalized peoples, biases, and a whole bunch of unrelated other issues that utterly detracts from the message of not being scumbags aboard. 

 Microagressions, forsooth.  One of my favorite suoervisors in my early days used to call me 'Dr. Asshole' for being overly educated, and once threatened to masturbate into the deck department's ears so 'You fuckers will hear me coming.'  Dude was beloved. 

 I really do think that the issue of sexual harassment aboard is an actual problem and widespread, based on the shitbags I have had to work with. And call me an asshole but it's easy to get members of certain minority groups fired for pulling this shit, we all have appropriately low expectations for them. But I've also seen a company absolutely marinate themselves in liability, by trying to avoid shitcanning a white guy who absolutely deserved to get his teeth kicked down his throat and thrown over the side.

 So, yeah, I get it, and no matter how retarded the training videos were, at least I didn't have to go through the indignity of an in-person class, as like 90% of things taught online, it has to be understood by the illiterate retards my company keeps hiring, so it's not as though you need to actually pay a lot of attention to get a perfect score... and as much as I dislike computer-based training, when you're doing mindless busywork, at least you don't have to go at the speed of the slowest learner as you would in an in-person class.

    Dr. Asshole, you see, reads enormously fast, which is why my monthly book budget is so high. Unfortunately the training videos force you to work slower and not work at your own pace, which makes me want to hang myself, and REALLY makes it challenging to try to stay positive. They really don't make it easy. It wouldn't matter if I was learning how to judge a blowjob contest, I absolutely can not stand having to wait and listen to narration of someone speaking slower than my rate of comprehension. 'S part of why I can't listen to podcasts. Having to listen to some gink take 45 seconds to explain something that should take 10 is just pure punishment. 

        

...and back again. Anatomy of a crew change.

  TUES AM:  

    Well, it was good to be home. 

  Sitting at my local airport now with a delayed flight to NY. Not an auspicious start to the trip.

    I dun gud, no booze, ate relatively healthy, lost 2lbs while I was home, which is unusual but welcome. Innapropriately Hot Foreign Wife had last week off so we were pretty well welded at the hip for 2 weeks, and that was nice. I have a pleasant light tan after the daily late-morning swims we did. Sadly, a series of particularly strong thunderstorms revealed a roof leak, and the $3000 to get a crew in to undo the fairly widespread damage sure hurt, but the roofing crew is at my house today so at least it's underway and was caught before I got damage inside the house beyond some spongy drywall and water stains. 

    I'm returning to work for August, which is a tough time to be working outside on a hot steel boat with 120-degree oil in the tanks. Gonna be digging deep this tour for sure. 

   My plane is boarding the miracle-seekers now. You know, the 40 people in wheelchairs, 35 of whom will magically regain the use of their legs before we land? Yeah, those trashbags. My love for humanity is at a low ebb when I'm at the airport. 

Wed PM, late:

      It was a bumpy but quick flight. In the end we only landed about 45 mins late. The pilot shoveled in some extra coal I guess. 

         Crew change was pleasantly smooth- Between JFK airport and the office is a BJ's, and I went in and stocked up on bulk items, including water and soda and energy drinks, which I usually store in the company's warehouse before heading to my hotel for the night. I was VERY fortunate in that the HQ was at the dock at the foot of the warehouse, and I humped my bulk stuff aboard and headed to the hotel. My room at the hotel was nice enough, and quiet for New York, but the TV was busted and an LED light liked to flicker on and off every 5-10 minutes, which was odd as it had been switched off but there was no visible plug to undo, so I hung some of my clothes over the light, which helped. The TV thing was no big deal except that I like to watch Youtube videos on that hotel's TV the night before crew change, as I start to adjust my circadian rhythm into work mode. 

    The night before crew change, I usually try to stay up late, until midnight or 1am, and sleep until 6. The short sleep allows me to catch a nap before taking the night watch on Wednesday after I arrive and move in.  When my alarm goes off, I shower, suck down an energy drink, and by then usually my taxi has arrived, where I'll go to a local grocery store and stock up on vegetables and staple items I didn't want to buy in bulk, before heading to the office... as it happens, the HQ left the office dock around 8pm on Tuesday, and went to anchor out by the Statue of Liberty, and I took a launch out to the HQ to relieve B, who was headed home. 

         The launch is owned and operated by the mayor of New York Harbor, Dirk the Dutchman.  Dirk, whom I've wrote about before, is an 82-year old Dutch gentleman who was a merchant seaman and later a New York harbor tug captain for 30-some years, and rather famous in our circles. 

     Forget that terrorist commie Moor mayor in New York. His jihadist schtick mandate ends at the seawall. Dirk's the mayor of the harbor, so it was good to check in and get casually sworn at, as is custom. Me being generally in Dirk's good graces, he usually limits it to 'quit fuckin' around and go on up the ladder' when it's time for me to, well, go up the ladder and onto the HQ. Prior to that though, as I usually do, I talk over the state of things on the harbor while I was at home, and get caught up on gossip and who died, when applicable. 

     After shaking hands with B when we traded places on the HQ (the offgoing guy being on the night watch, E was also there to help and thus no need to do a handoff and arrival conference with B to get me up to date), and casting the launch off, I humped my stuff indoors and started stowing my things and pulling others out of storage as E and I caught up on personal things and he downloaded the details about what's happening, what happened when I was away, and the state of stores, fuel, orders, etc. About 90 mins later I went in my room to make up my bunk and put out my shitty clothes for work, putting away the Good Shoes and my travel clothes before laying down for a nap. 

       Sadly, my nap was only about 2 hours, as the piss taker arrived. 

       Being subject to drug testing, we get randomly hit up to piss in a cup for the edification of the office people and today was our turn. I was sleeping like shit anyhow, up and down, so no big deal. After delivering the goods, I just hung out a while, wandering around and getting a feel for the HQ and doing a more official walkaround with E after the heat of the day passed. 

 And that brings us to tonight, where I am communing with nature, more or less, and passing the time (no orders until tomorrow noon), and getting back into the rhythm. I paid out the 3k for the roof leak at home, which hurt, but nothing I can do about it but cry. As I'm free for the night, I pulled out some ground chicken, and cooked it up with onions, zucchini and tomatoes, and I'll stuff a couple of orange peppers with the mix for dinner. 

    I can't say as I'm joyful to be here, but I'm here and I'm ready to work, and ready to get paid for working. 

100 days

 So one of the things we're doing differently these days on the HQ is that we're doing a 100-day challenge of no booze and no binge eating while at home. 

 Now, seeing as I spend 2/3 of my time at work and we don't drink alcohol while working, that's not exactly a challenge... the challenge for us is that the time home is when we all eat and drink to excess, where every meal is a feast and every evening a celebration of... well, really just of not being at fucking work for once. 

      I'm home now, approatching one week here, and it's been good but weird. Not a challenge, TBH, beyond that my default approach to being home involves drinking and cooking and eating too much fairly often... celebrating, really. So part of the challenge is just switching up behaviors, something that we all thought would be a good thing, 

...and it has been. Without booze, I'm sleeping better, and eating less, as the de-inhibiting factor of booze isn't present. My wife is on board, and as she'll usually have a drink right alongside me (wine to my whisky), she. not being as prone to debauchery as I, hasn't found it changes much, although I admit I enjoy drinking and swimming, which is something we tended to do, but we're both doing a daily swim after an hour's walk each morning, something else we don't normally do. 

 So, it's been good. Maybe not a blast and at the level of intensity in terms of fun, but I'm having a good time behaving differently. And as I'm well into the 100 days, I'll be freed up at Halloween, whereupon I'm hoping to be locked in a cabin somewhere in the blue ridge mountains with the Mrs, which is something we like to do in the fall. 

 Ah well, back to it. Working next week, gotta enjoy this one. 

A walk in white Brooklyn

 When I am at one of our lay berths in Brooklyn in between cargoes, it's the only time I have at work where I can go ashore on my own w/o a task to do. 

   Generally I hope to get ashore once a week to walk, get groceries, and head back to the HQ, usually a 3 hour process if time allows. 

   I'm just 3 watches away from going home so I didn't need groceries today, but I did go to the store anyhow to stock up on caffeine, bump up my stores aboard.  Along the way I saw a really unusual number of people who looked like me...and I mean, like, really unusual numbers. 80+%, maybe even 90, once I crossed over into Red Hook.

     I found White Brooklyn. 

       In the 14 years since I agreed to be homeported in Brooklyn, I've seen it become a 3rd world neighborhood, and a place in decline. For the most part much of New York is the same now. On a 4 mile walk through Cobble Hill, downtown Brooklyn and Carroll Gardens, I'll see maybe a dozen white people total, and of the other 96% it's some black people here and there mostly around the projects areas and the shoe and wig stores around Fulton Market, and a whole shitpot of arabs and latinos everywhere else. 

 But today I walked through Red Hook, and once I passed the run down ballfields and projects,  the white people started peeping out, like crocuses in a snowdrift. By the time I was walking down Van Brunt, there were sun-averse Americans on the street and in neat lines waiting to go in shops and cafes, speaking English, and it was surprising to behold. I heard words I haven't heard in over a decade in New York, when I stepped off the curb to pass a couple of sickly-looking woman in front of a shop.

'Woops, excuse me.' 

Coulda knocked me over with a feather.

   Turns out, it's Sunday and when the weather is fine, white New Yorkers put on something tan or brown, or something that won't attract the dangerous attention of feral foreigners anyhow, let down their unkempt and kinda oily shoulder-length hair (men and women), and, dowdy like sparrows on a leafless branch, make noise. 

 Surprised me too. I didn't know there were so many of us... but all had the sickly, furtive look that you see when you see Londoners in photos during the blitz. These are NOT thriving people. These are rabbits living next to a coyote den. Now, granted, it's Brooklyn, and 90% of the people more than likely share a certain political commonality, and that political demographic certainly isn't famous for being hale, hearty, broad of shoulder and brash. Rather the opposite. But it being Sunday, I saw some maybe women, but wearing dresses, which was pleasant to see, and I only saw maybe two Che Guevara tshirts on the usual weedy stunted eunuchs. 

       Still, it was nice. No fighting, no yelling, hardly like Brooklyn at all. 

 Anyhow I got my stuff and went back aboard. Next time I go ashore, God willing, it'll be to the airport. 

 

The second dog watch day

 Well now, waking up at 1am is never fun, but glory be, I am waking up to a quiet watch. No cargo ops until tomorrow night. 

    So, with one week to go on this tour, we stand dog watches, shorter shifts, so that over the course of 24 hours, our schedules reverse. I'll go to sleep mid-morning today, a few hours early, and wake up to stand the night watch tonight. It's always hard to sleep for a few days after having our circadian rythm inturrupted and by the time we fully adjust it's time to go home, but when I leave in a week and Big E returns from home, B will be on days, and the transition time as Big E gets up to speed will be smoother as B, who has had a week to stand the day watch, is fully up to speed and has full situational awareness of what's going on in the HQ. 

...and it being July, I will not be sad to be working in the cooler evenings. I roasted my balls off these past few weeks. 

      I also missed getting rained on yesterday. That almost never happens. I have a pet peeve about working in the rain, despite having worked outdoors for 95% of my working career.  There was a running joke when I was in my 20's that I was secretly a rain god, and the rain loved me and just wanted to be near me always... I dunno, something from a novel someone stole, but it does shake out that if it is going to rain, it will happen when I am outside. There's been WAY too many days when the rain stops 5 minutes before the end of my watch when it's a watch where I need to be outdoors, these past 25 years... and for 1980 to 1999 when I was fishing.

     I know it's not reasonable for a man who's been working outside from age eight to fifty mumble mumble years old to bitch about weather, but to be fair, you work all day all summer all winter in wet fucking underwear and get back to me about what a ray of God-damned sunshine you are!

        Still, tonight. Tonight I'm grateful to have a quiet night watch. I wish I could take a slug of nyquil or something when I go to bed, but nyquil is wildly verboten aboard by decree for the side effects, which, sadly, are the effects I would have wanted.  So no, I'll have to raw dog it when I go to bed. Generally that means a 3-hour nap and a long evening tomorrow, but oh well.

       I'm not someone who gets easily bored if I have something to read and essentially a square acre or two of steel machinery and parts to tinker with, so at least there's that. I've been being good with diet and exercise again too to I'm in a good head- and ass-space as I muddle my way through. 

Halfway Day

 Busy this week, for sure.

         We got our deck crane repaired, and after 6 months with the crane head having had enough twist in the end to look like a confused dog hearing a new sound, it's a pleasure to be back to standard. 

 Since there was welding to be done, the law requires a marine chemist to test for explosive vapors beforehand, and with the guy already here and a Gas-Free Certificate issued, while my crane got fixed up, the port engineer for my company here in NY and I went for a walkaround through the bowels of the HQ and talked about this fall's upcoming maintenance projects after the weather cools off but before we start freezing up. I also took several pallets of supplies and parts and another of consumables. 

Fast forward to Friday:

     It's been nonstop since the crane got fixed. The heat was so brutal a few days ago, but I am still enjoying not being rained on every damn day, so I'm bearing it well enough. 

What's going on here

 It's been a bit since I caught up with what's happening here. It's been notably busy, which is fine, but mostly I've been uninspired to write. In two days I'll be at Halfway Day, and on the downhill side of this tour. 

     Presently we're at my employer's Brooklyn dock, getting some long-awaited repairs to one of my deck cranes. The cranes, original to the HQ and now approaching 20 years old, are very handy and robust, but about 6 months ago a mild warp was spotted at the head of the crane. This was from stress no doubt, as cranes aren't meant to take sideways stress and whether we like it or not, sometimes they experience lateral stress at the head of the crane, for example,  when a ship's manifold might be both very high off the water and 15 feet inboard of the rail of the ship. When it is time to retrieve the hose, it's of course better that the head of the crane be directly over the hose, so that the strain on the crane is vertical... but sometimes no matter how we try, if the ship's manifold is 50 feet or more above my deck, I run out of crane, and the hose, when retrieved, exerts sideways stress on the crane until I get it back over the edge of the ship's deck. And so it is that after nearly 20 years, the steel plate that the crane head is made out of, got a few degrees of bend to it. \

     So, long story longer, it took 6 MONTHS for the crane manufacturer to fab us a new head and ship it. 6 months! That's some dogshit customer service. Still, it arrived the other day and I've now got a bunch of specialized welders aboard putting a new head on the crane. It will be wonderful to have it 100% functional again.  So that's pretty cool. 

_______________________________________________________

 The tugboat operator community being small, this week we witnessed the return of The Destroyer, a tugboat mate who earned that reputation for navigating via braille around NY harbor. Also, I should mention that The Destroyer is one of the nicest people in the world, so he got to drive his 4,000hp wrecking ball for a while  before getting let go. Well, he is filling in as mate on one of the 3rd party tugboats that work for my company to help with the workload. We've only had him as our tugboat once so far, but he did just fine on our last job. He's fortunate to have one of the best deckhands I've ever worked with as his watch AB (Able-bodied seaman), which I'm sure helps. Still, it was nice to be so pleasantly surprised. Ironically enough, I had his former captain running our assigned tugboat all weekend, a man who had hair prior to having the Destroyer but went bald like Professor X after. 

  _______________________________________________________

Having reread that last part, I should mention that harbor and coastwise tugboats usually have a captain and a mate as the only two guys handling the wheelhouse duties, and traditionally they work 6 hours on/6 hours off for the entirety of the 2 to 3 weeks they work in a tour so one of them is always on watch. They usually have at least 2 deckhands and an engineer as well, unless they don't do a lot of moves in the day or if the deckhand doesn't have a lot of labor in his duties, in which case some tugs run with a 'deckineer' a licensed engineer who also covers the deckhand's job when the deckhand is off watch. 

_____________________________________________________________________

That was a rough one.

 Did I have a mental health crisis yesterday?

 Damn, I was utterly miserable last night. Yes, 3 days of rain and the beginnings of diaper rash happened. It's been brutally hot and wet and busy with weird oil blends we're mixing in the cargo tanks, so I'm getting vapors blasted in my face while peering down into the tanks looking at a measuring tape. Yes I'm on a diet. And for some reason I had low energy, and everything just seemed miserable and unhappy.  A confluence of events, maybe, but it was the shittiest night I've had in years... and everything went fine, which is the weirdest part.

 Well, today seems better. The rain stopped, at least, and while it's still dark and gloomy, tonight we have dog watches, shortened, so that I will rotate onto working days and take over the show. 

 I dunno. Yesterday I was feeling like a dog in God's hot car. Today seems better, but it hasn't really started yet. 

 I guess I better put pants on, and see what the good Lord has for me today. 

Happy 250!

 Happy Independence Day, everyone. 

      We've been hanging out mostly over in Newark since I got back aboard the HQ.  The powers that be don't want undesirables like working mariners to infect their view of the tall ships and navy fleet, while admirals and generals have their crab salad, so we're ordered by NY harbor traffic control to stay away from The Quality. 

 Well, in the meanwhile commerce continues. While I'm only 5-6 miles from the parade and the airshow, it might as well be mars. 

 Eh, the stuff on TV was cool. I'm a little assmad that we were ordered to stay aboard our vessels and above all else, not be seen by our betters and get kicked off the waters they depend on us to work.

 Still, 250 years, I'm not so much a wet blanket as to not have enjoyed seeing the festivities. It's nice to see who actually loves our nation and who hates it but for some fuckin reason, refuses to leave. 

...and nothing got done

 Well, I'm headed to bed in a few minutes. Flying out to work on the first flight of the day tomorrow. 

 

   I had a very enjoyable time off this time.  Almost nothing important got done. In fact this may be the least productive time home I've had in the past 5 or so years, if not more. 

 It was great.  

Go to a rodeo

 So Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I went to a rodeo last night. It was AWESOME. Start to finish an absolute blast. You should go. 

        I absolutely had an 'oh wow' moment, too, along with lots of fun. At the intro, the MC came out, warmed the crowd up, then led a prayer, after, when all the riders and participants take the field, there was a troupe of female trick riders, all decked out, carrying huge American flags, while Lee Greenwood's 'Proud to be an American' blasted out. I looked over to see my wife fairly misty. She hadn't seen a lot of overt shows of patriotism and appreciation for our country, an as someone who isn't from here, she knows better than most why we should be so proud of our nation. 

 Anyways, it was a blast, from the bull riding, barrel racing, roping and the kids events too. Seeing a bunch of 5 year olds riding bucking sheep was cute AF, and the pre-teen girls competing in barrel racing was amazing- those kids were skilled as hell. Seeing such tiny people showing off crazy skill like that is impressive as hell. 

Pressure

 

Sore spot

Oh man I sure pissed off a scifi author I really like. 

That's a bummer for me. As I said, I like the guy. Good writer, excellent essayist, fun AF.

 No, it's not Larry Correia, thank God. Guy's famously brutal to people he doesn't like. 

    ...So I have highly specialized knowledge of a really limited number of really narrow fields. History is NOT one of them. The guy in question is a history buff. Has forgotten more than I know. 

   About the only part of American history that I know in detail is the lives of the pilgrims at Plymouth MA. They sucked up ALL the history oxygen growing up, as my town was where lots of them settled, and my neighborhood was also an indian camp and later, battlefield.

 So said battle was a big deal in my hometown, and also to the local tribes' descendents even today.

 The author in question got REALLY upset when I pointed out that Massasoit, the indian chief, pushed the pilgrims really hard to make war on all tribes but the Wampanoag, but in failing that, when the pilgrims later signed the mutual defense treaty the year after their arrival, Massasoit lied and successfully was able to get the pilgrims to massacre the indians at Wessagusett.

     It's always possible I was fed propaganda, too. Perhaps the author was right?

 Well, turns out the tribes' web site also acknowledged that Massasoit 'probably' lied to make the massacre happen. His son, King Philip, used that massacre many years later as part of the justification for the war he kicked off. 

 Like I said, I don't know much. It was kinda cool how with all the revisionist history that we get over anything involving the indians, the story remains consistent whether the tribes or the pilgrims' writings tell it. None of them covered themselves in glory, for damn sure. I am glad that on verification, I wasn't wrong. 

 Still, the whole thing's weird for me. Getting called names by someone I respect just sucks. I'm not good at people I guess... and this is something that happened over 400 years ago. Why in the world did feelings get hurt that hard? 

 Eh, oh well I guess. I don't see a question of history being worth the nuclear level of assmad that happened. 

 Glad I go home soon. Last watch tomorrow. 

The Lord Provides

I have the night off here on the HQ. No cargo tonight. We're at our good lay berth in Brooklyn, hanging in until tomorrow after lunch. 

 I'm on nights, this being my final week of the tour, so I woke up at 2pm, and at 3 I went out forna walk, it being forecast to rain later. 95 degrees out, high humidity, sunny. Not great conditions for a walk but I got it in. 

         It's Puerto Rican day on Sunday here in NY, NY having more Puerto Ricans than Puerto Rico. Of course, being who they are, by 4pm there were ghetto sleds driving around w/speakers blasting their shitty music at retarded volumes all throughout Red Hook, which isn't nearly as latin as the rest of the city, and these shitbox cars are modded specifically to blast music OUT away from the fuckin' car, to fuck with everyone. 

     Honestly, and people wonder why all the goodwill towards immigrants has dried up? 

       So, the rain I was talking about came fast when it came. The sky got that ohshit gray of clouds churning, with a 5 minute warning and the heavens opened up.  One of those downpours where the viz drops to about 300 feet. 

 And now, with the storm passed... silence. Just a few birds, the odd duck quack, and the drone of my generator. 

 Peace. 

Young, old, black, white

  Dock talk yesterday: 

    So B and I were standing on the dock with 7 other tankermen who were off the berths nearby.  We spent about 30 mins talking and eventually there were 2 conversations going. The guys under 40 were talking about supplements and who got fired so far this year, and us old farts were talking about medications and who died so far this year. 

     True story. 

 Tankermen are much like seagulls: we make a lot of noise, will eat out of a trash can, and absolutely will shit on anyone in the area.

 It wasn't long until the good natured insults were flying. But wow, zoomers are easily shocked. Puritanical when it comes to foul humor regarding race and sexual orientation. Poor kids. Seeing friends who are of completely different colors insult each other using stereotypes is a minefield for them. Super uncomfortable. 

I've been friends with the two worst offenders for almost 20 years.  One guy, O, used to be my 2nd man. They happen to be black and I mean, I'm a ginger, well, strawberry blond I guess, but still, I am the whitest white guy ever. 

 I could see at least one of the younger guys was getting anxious about the put-downs and humor. The two guys I was talking about? O was with me when I was coming to grips with my mom's passing. The other guy, we talked for months through the death of his marriage. History, you know? 

 The zoomer generation has never really experienced real fellowship between men, and that's a tragedy. They're so isolated, the poor bastards. I make fun of their fragility as a class, but it's starting to feel cruel. I wasn't about to go into a whole exposition and explain myself to them, but I hope that they'll get to experience not being so God-damned alone. In the meanwhile, I got caught up with friends, got my genitals mocked, accused O of stealing everyone's bicycles, and B and I left smiling.  And maybe the younger guys will try to build something similar with shipmates for when they're no longer the younger guys.