The Oly in Oly

Words cannot describe how happy we were to leave Pearl behind and return to the States for a few weeks. Yeah, sure, Ha-vi-ee is supposedly a state, but I didn’t see a lot of difference between Oahu and Guam, Singapore, or any of the other Pacific rocks we’d been stuck on. Hawaii has Pearl Harbor, Washington has Bangor. In Pearl everything’s so nut-to-butt you feel like you’re at sea; the Bangor submarine base was so big that some of the roads had a speed limit of 55 mph (back then). There are more trees in the exchange parking lot in Bangor than there are on the whole base in Pearl. The list goes on and on.

Now, we were supposedly heading back to do some upkeep stuff at Bangor, but most of the time it was liberty ports. And the best, by far, was the city of Olympia. Our boat didn’t have a great relationship with our namesake; the last time we’d stopped by we were greeted with protesters carrying “Disown the Death Ship!” signs. But this time was after Desert Storm, where even the hippies were supporting the troops. Needless to say, we were front-page news the whole time we were there.

We showed up with a bang. Literally. The diesel they gave us for shore power ate itself, and we ended up having to rig hoses topside to fight the fire, because the pier was so jam-packed with gawkers and press that the fire trucks couldn’t get to the scene. We were a little amused at all the attention, but we assumed it was a one-time thing. We were SO wrong.

Everybody in the city wanted to tour the boat. At first, the CO tried to control this by handing out a certain number of passes per day (mainly to politicians and other people worth brown-nosing), but that scheme quickly fell apart. Every day, there was a line of people waiting for a tour that stretched the length of the pier. This gave us a huge bargaining chip with the locals, since we could give them a “personal” tour, allowing them to bypass the line. Can you say “boat groupie?”.

The SK’s made out like bandits selling crap with the boat’s logo on it – they sold virtually everything in the ship’s store (including those crappy lighters). In fact, after they ran out of junk to sell, some local guy started selling home-made boat shirts on the pier, and our Chop actually considered buying him out.

We did get one protester, though I think he was protesting the basic concept of paying for a military, and not us in particular. Since the nearest military base was to the north in Tacoma, we probably made his week by cutting down the travel time. He had a cooler full of soda, which he was giving away to anyone who’d listen to his rant. The locals waiting for a tour did their best to ignore him, but we didn’t – free soda is free soda. The only reason we stopped was the Nav said it looked bad to have a bunch of us standing around his little table.

I screwed up the first night, and ditched before someone could order me to go out in a dress uniform. That was understandable; wearing a uniform off base was a solid gold guarantee no woman would ever speak to you and looked like a big sign that said “please come fuck me up” to everyone else. But not in Olympia – we were rock stars that first night. I actually had to team up with some cones who were in uniform to get in on the action. Lots of free stuff that night, and life was good.

About halfway through our visit the command rounded us all up, cleaned us up somewhat, and presented us to the governor. That was a long day, made even longer by the swarms of vets they also invited to the ceremony. We didn’t mind, except they had a tendency to corner you and talk your ear off about how things were when THEY were in. Sea stories are like going for a trip in the car – time passes faster if you’re the one driving.