I love going places I've never been before and doing something I've never done. Lisa Qualsett had emailed me that when they came to San Diego over Christmas, they had toured an aircraft carrier. Then at the airport we picked up a flyer about it. That sounded like fun.
Well we couldn't have imagined what a great day that would provide. After eating lunch at a seafood restaurant in San Diego harbor, we drove down to the USS Midway and for the next three and half hours, we soaked up the information and atmosphere of the United States' most historic aircraft carrier. It was first commissioned during World War II and then saw its last action during the first Persian Gulf War. More than 225,000 thousand people served on it during its history. As we toured the huge ship, I was overwhelmed by the knowledge of all the men and women who had lived a portion of their lives aboard it.
The Midway has been a museum now in San Diego Harbor for around a year and half. After you board, you pick up a small digital player and headphones and do a self-guided walking tour, going from station to station and hearing interviews with people who served and have amazing stories to tell.
The crew quarters are bunks stacked on on top of the other. Each narrow bunk has a thin mattress on a slab that can be raised to reveal a shallow storage area in a container underneath it. This was home to thousands upon thousands of kids, basically, since the average age of people who work on aircraft carriers is so young. The junior officer quarters were just one step above that.
Each link in the gigantic chains that hold the anchors weighs hundred of pounds. A crew of 4300 sailors comprised the crew that suppored 200 aviators. There were dozens of statistics to absorb? they ate 10 tons of food a day, 1000 loaves of bread a day and served 10,500 cups of coffee at a time.
We paid an extra $6 each to go on a simulated mission over Iraq. It was basically a virtual reality ride and you've probably been on such things. But this had the feel of something real because you took off from a carrier deck and flew support for troops who were under fire. It was fun, yes, but more than that, it sure was a great reminder of what our men and women in uniform are facing all the time.
If we had wanted to spend the time and the extra $40 each, we could have taken an hour of flight training in a real simulator. Now how cool would that have been. If I ever go back, I'm doing that for sure. I contented myself with sitting in an actual cockpit for a few minutes.
The hangar deck is huge and has several airplanes on display. But then when you go up on the flight deck, that's where you're really blown away by what they've done with the Midway. There are so many different fighter jets, helicopters, supply planes, vintage aircraft everything you can hope for sitting on the flight deck, and you can even go in some of them and look into the cockpit, imagine yourself taking off for a mission or flying back from one.
All over the Midway, men who served on it at some point in its history are available to tell you in person how planes got catapulted off its deck and how they got back to it. You could feel their pride and joy in what they were doing. So many times during the tour, I was thinking of my own dad. The little LST he served on during WWII would have been a tiny gnat next to the Midway and yet they were serving in the same effort.
Our last visit was to the island area where all the people who actually navigated and ran the flight operations worked. That meant climbing up narrow ladders several flights. When we got to the bridge, our guide said, If anyone wants to sit in the captain's chair, go ahead. Well, no one else was, and so I scurried over there and climbed up into it. They told us that captains of aircraft carriers usually only served about a year because that was the longest time a person could go without sleep!
Well, can you tell I had an awesome time? I think it will go down as one of my most memorable experiences. I was having so much fun, I forgot to worry about falling off into the bay.
We ended the day by watching the sunset on a beach just north of San Diego. We thought that was all we were going to see. But when we got there, we discovered there were about a hundred pregnant seals who were sleeping on the beach. The sunset just amazes you because you just stand there and watch the sun sink into the ocean in a matter of seven or eight minutes.
That was yesterday. Today we have another day planned that doesn't involve golf at all. But I'll tell you about that tomorrow.