New Orleans and Hartford traffic accident from the perspective of a Marine

Well, we pulled into bahrain yesterday. It's near saudi arabia, oman area. We were supposed to only be here a few days, but, if you haven't read about it or heard about it from CNN or something, we collided with one of our submarines a few days ago. It wasn't our fault though. Submarines are stealth so we wouldn't have seen it anyways. The investigation is trying to figure out why the heck THEY didn't see US. We're a pretty easy target to see ;) so the boat's ganna be in port for a long time, the sub tore a 16' by 18' foot hole in the boat, so ya, it's ganna be out of the game for a while. Now it's up in the air if we're ganna be going in-land with a company, or if we're ganna go back to the boxer and join back up with our main unit.
Pray we go in-land, I'll go insane if we're stuck on a ship much longer...

I've been placed on mess duty (dining hall duty) for about a month. Every unit has to have a certain ratio of mess-men to their troop number. So our unit had to give up two again. We rotate out after like 30 or so days. So now, it's me and another guy, LCpl Patlan. It's not terrible. It's not fun really, but it's ok. It just sux cuz I've got to get up ridiculously early in the morning. That's probably the only big draw back from it.

Aside from all that, not much is going on.

Well, luv ya'll out there!

Send me some messages sometime, let me know you guys are alive still.
Mike

Day one...

well, i'm in the middle of work on my first night. we pulled out of port at about 0900 today, at which point i was in bed. i've been put on night crew along with two cpl's, cpl davis, and cpl amador.
ship life's cramed like crazy! our racks are stacked three high, they are each about 6.5 feet long, 2.5 feet wide, and about 2 feet tall. we've got lockers built in under our beds to keep most of our personal stuff, then we've got a small florecent bulb and a single outlet above our heads. the racks are branched out off of hallways in a berthing area, these branches are two racks deep, with 3 stack on top of eachother on either side, so there are 12 marines stuffed into one small section. it's pretty crushed space, but it's livable. there's a small lounge room that has a few tables and a bunch of chairs. one of our gysgt's installed a flat screen tv in there, so that'll make life nicer. we've got the gym one floor above us, so it's easy to go work out.
you'd think that since we are asked to put our lives on the line for this countries goals, we would be provided with good food... but that's definetly not the case! haha one of the meals today was ravioli, hot dogs, and re-heated shrimp. none of these tasted like it was supposed to... i can't really descibe it that well. i guess the best i can do is, leave some shrimp out of the freezer for a day or so, the freeze it, then cook it, then re-heat it, then feed it to people... this is the way that mostly all our food is. i think i speak for pretty much everyone i know on here when i say that it's not so hott stuff. but this food'll seem good in compairison to what's going to be coming later on, this i know for sure!
well, it feels great to know that we're going in a strait line to a specific place! the work-ups that we were required to go on where depressing because all we'd be doing is sailing in circles off the coast of camp pendalton. it's a lot more fun to know that we're actually headed somewhere!
well, until next time.

Thought I'd start out by saying HEY, how goes it readers?

Well, my life's taken some interesting turns over the past few years. I think the turn that would be most interesting to readers would be my life as a United States Marine. The military's a fairly large part of the news these days, put lightly... So I thought I'd try to shed some light on what it's like to be in the shoes of someone in the military.
I want to go into some detail about the training I've gone through, particularly boot camp and MCT. So if you're someone looking for information about the Marine Corps, you can find some tips on how to survive training and what it's like entering the fleet marine forces.
Well, some information about me: I'm currently stationed in sunny San Diego CA at MCAS Miramar. I work as an Aviation Supply Specialist. My job is to support helicopter squadrons by supplying parts for the aircraft maintenance crews. Not necessarily a glamorous job, but it's a necessity.
I'm about to deploy on the 13th MEU to the middle east tomorrow, so I'll do my best to portray what goes on during deployment. So if you're a personal friend of mine, a family member, or just someone that wants to know what it's like to be in the shoes of a Marine, I hope you can get something out of this blog.
I'll do my best to explain what goes on, but I won't be able to go into details about locations we're in until some time after we've left. This is for security reasons. Just thought I'd throw in that disclaimer... Well, I hope you enjoy!!!