If your reading this, you probably know me and of course it doesn't shock you that I am just now writing about a something that started over 3 months ago! My intense drive to keep my professional life in order has led to a little lack of zest in keeping my personal life in the best of order, but in the end life rolls on and all is, more or less, well.
So this whole journey had many beginnings. Over 6 years ago I decided that I wanted to join the navy and travel the world, but thats a little too much story for this installment so we will start in November of 2009. After a 6 month extension of my tour on board PORTER, and 6 months of hounding my detailer, I finally got my dream orders. At this point I thought that hard part was over...boy was I wrong! Getting the orders was just the beginning of what would be the biggest learning experience of my naval career. Although moving across the country or across the world is a lot easier when your in the military there is still a lot to be done by the service member. It was up to me to get the process rolling and to keep it from getting stymied by the red tape the navy loves so much. The first steps were for Brad and I to get screened for overseas assignment. For me it was about 20 min worth of paper work and a few days worth of chasing people around the boat for signatures. Brad's process on the other hand was not nearly so simple. He struggled to get time off work, was reliant on the guidance given by junior corpsmen who really don't give a damn, and his lack of savvy in the ways of the navy left him constantly misinformed and two steps behind. After all was said and done 5 weeks went by before Brads screening was complete. I will make sure that I never try to transfer from a ship while on deployment ever again! I think it make it 20 times more difficult. My best advice for any new navy family that is getting ready to transfer is to get the whole family members checked out by a naval dental clinic and naval doctor. Since my medical and dental check ups are a part of life in the navy, it never really occurred to me that they would want my dependent to have all that stuff too. I never thought that Brad's boycott on dental check ups would ever effect our big picture, but his mouth full of neglected teeth nearly cost us our assignment to Europe!
Once our screenings were complete, I thought I had one foot out the door, but was once again met with a red tape storm. My first departure was scheduled for early December, but waiting on Brad's screening pushed that back. The next goal was the end of December; home in time for Christmas and New Years. Disappointment once again. I finally managed to get out of there on Jan 3rd, 2010 and there was much rejoicing!
Even after leaving the boat the PORTER was still able to inflict its wrath. I transfered with two other guys and the ship's office didn't even tell these guys that they should be in civilian clothes since we had to travel across the city in a muslim country, to get to the base where we would be staying. Luckily we arrived unscathed and the gate guards for the base in Bahrain are sailors too, so the two guys only got a lecture about not traveling in uniform anywhere off the base. The ride that we got from the pier to the base was also not arranged for us by the ship. The office told us that "there are buses that run to the base all time, just find one." Much to our chagrin but not surprise, there were no buses to be found. We managed to talk one of the customs check point bus drivers into taking us all the way to the base. We made sure to give him a nice tip to show our gratitude. Once on base we checked into the base "Hotel" its barracks style living, bedroom bathroom, kitchenette(Fridge and microwave) for $45 a night, out of pocket of course seeing as once again the ship couldn't have been bothered to get us travel money before we left the ship,,,
So now we are checked into our rooms and have a place to sleep, but still have absolutely no notion of who we are suppose to be checking in with everyday, what day we are leaving to go back to the states, or if our travel arrangements have even been made. As the senior person of our group, I take the lead on investigating our current status of screwed over, and found it to be mild but definitely full blown. Our ship did not tell anyone on the base that we were coming, so no one was expecting to muster us. The ship also failed to make our travel arrangements back to the states. Luck for us the admin staff for the Nimitz beach detachment took us in and got us all set up. They even gave us a ride to the air strip. The three of us spent 5 days in Bahrain waiting for the military only flight out on Friday the 8th of January. We got up at 3 am, and finally boarded our plane around 11 am (just a little more than your average wait time at a commercial airport!) With the time difference it was around 3 am on the 8th in Norfolk, and by the time my flight made pit stops in Italy, and Spain, I waited in line to declare nothing at customs and then waited for bags; Brad and I emerged from the MAC terminal to head home at just after 2 am. A little word to the wise, if one is traveling with a sea bag on a MAC flight, you might want to mark it in some way that makes it stand out from any angle. With 60 sea bags on that luggage carrousel my name written on one side( that happened to be the side on the belt) was not of any real help in identifying it.
With PORTER and Bahrain in my rear view, I set my sites on C-school, the move, and 30 days leave.
There are 4 different naval installations in the area as well as some Army and Marine. Needless to say most sailors don't get around to every d'urn base in the area, and I am no exception to that rule. The USS PORTER (DDG 78) was home ported out of Norfolk Naval Air Station (NAS for short). NAS is the base where I spent most of my time while I was here in Norfolk. Upon my return my C-school was going to be located out at Dam Neck Annex. This base is so small, it rivals Bremerton base (Not counting the ship yard). IT IS SMALL! And even with the navigational advances that we have at our fingertips it still took us almost two hours to find the stupid thing. Once there it wasn't too difficult to get around but it sure is a far cry from our place. We lived in a cute little 2 bedroom house in Norfolk about 10 min from Norfolk NAS, and now its a cute little two bedroom thats 35 min plus traffic from Dam Neck out in Virginia Beach. I guess commuting was inevitable. I have managed to avoid it for a good many years. 
It was an interesting couple of weeks when Norfolk received the biggest snow storm in 5 years! all this snow brought the entire Hampton Road's area to its knees.
With the whole area sliding on the ice and digging themselves out of drifts, our move dates were put on hold. This of course added to my stress level dramatically, but gave us more time to sort and prepare. That extra time flew by and before we knew it the snow was melted and we were struggling to get everything disconnected and organized for the movers to pick up. Even with that extra time to prepare we were still up until 1:30 in the morning. That late night made for a long day in class the next day for me, and a really long day of directing the chaos of packers and movers at home for Brad, but when it was all said and done, everything was packed and we were moved in to the spare bedroom at our friends house down the street. That was the start of our nomadic experiment that would run the course of 6 weeks!
