"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:19:32 -0300, "Don White"
wrote:

Read something interesting in this morning paper about the USS Wasp visit
here this week.
Seems the sailors have a small 'motorcycle gang' called the 'Wasp Raiders'
aboard and bring their bikes along so they can terrorize foreign ports.
One
Petty Officer 1st Class has a Harley Davidson 2000 Electra Glide.
Seems more like a Club Med cruise!
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=39084&sc=89


The USN changes like everything else.
When I was in you couldn't have civvies on the ship.
They were civilian locker clubs ashore in the U.S. where you rented a
locker to keep your civvies in. For four years I was always in
uniform on ship, military base or foreign port.
Of course security now demands that U.S. military personnel don't
advertise themselves in foreign ports. Used to be exactly the
opposite, which hits on a previous thread about uniforms.
I was discharged in December of '67, but did a stint in the reserves
in 74-76. I visited my old can in Norfolk, and was surprised when
going aboard that it was listing about 15 degrees to port, and noted
that to the OOD. He didn't take it kindly. Just a question of
keeping the oil/water tanks balanced. Oh well. The boiler rooms
were filthy to my eyes, and I couldn't find a boilerman who knew where
the steam smothering system valve was located.
Anyway, even though I thought I was being as delicate as I could,
they figured me for a hardass. I didn't stay long.
On another 2-weeker on a carrier crew were getting busted for
possession of LSD and that Mary Juana stuff, openly cheating at cards,
etc. I was happy to get out. ****, if I want to do drugs, the last
place I'd toke up is a U.S Navy ship.
Anyway, during my active service in the '60's, for damage control
duties I was trained to pick up pieces of plutonium that may be shed
by our ASROC nukes and put them in a bucket for disposal over the
side. Of course I had rubber gloves for protection. I probably would
have done it too.
So whatever their knowledge of geography, if today's sailors tell
anybody who instructs them to pick up plutonium with rubber gloves
to go get ****ed, I heartily applaud them.

--Vic

Plutonium is safe to pick up with gloves. Low energy particles, just the
low energy particles come off a substance with a 1/2 life of 25,000 years.
Most likely a plutonium particle will not pass through a sheet of paper.
Still a bad thing to throw it overboard. We might get Godzilla.