Forum: What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I just returned from a brief visit to Virginia—I went out to visit my son, a sailor who is stationed on a USN destroyer in Norfolk, VA. I had a series of very interesting experiences.

• The high rise hotel room I stayed in lost A/C the first night I was there. Ninety five degrees and ninety five percent humidity and water service to the rooms was intermittent—don’t flush the terlet. Luckily for me, I was able to be moved into one of three rooms in the hotel that had an independent A/C (the handicapped suite; I was told that if a handicapped guest registered, I would have to surrender my room.) Sleeping in the car with the engine running, A/C full blast and damn the CO was beginning to look like an option! The temperature in Norfolk was 104 that day.
• There was a huge amount of frustration with the hotel guests—there was no ice in the ice machines, no bottled water, food service at a minimum, and to top it off, a gun fight in the parking lot of the hotel the last night I was there (I didn’t see much as I had rolled off the bed and hit the deck when I heard the rounds popping off, praying that the boneheads out there didn’t shoot out the A/C unit.)
• I had the pleasure of visiting the ship that my son is stationed on. The corpsman there, when asked about AF stated: “I can’t talk about it, but I’m worried”.

What does this tell me? Under pressure, social conventions disintegrate, there isn’t enough money in the world to buy safety, and that TPTB are clearly worried about this from the top down. And this was from a short vist to a hot neighborhood during a very limited heat wave. Stretch this scenario out for a few weeks, and now we gots something to chew on.

What else does this tell me? Be aware, travel prepared, and be ready to deal with small disasters, because those abilities will allow you to attempt to cope with the larger disasters to come.

And we won’t even talk about the airport experience . . . just wash those hands, and carry a mask, alcohol gel and a leetle bottle of vodka with you.

Ain’t Norfolk Airport grand? I’ve been through there 6 times in the last 8 months….

I was surprised by the size of the airpost, and the architecture is typical early nineties severe. Still, the boarding process there was OK. Atlanta and Houston were different altogether. Extremely crowded, poorly ventilated (with enough people coughing to make the concourse sound like a TB ward), dirty, inadequate numbers of restrooms, and in Atlanta, no soap in the containers next to the hand sink. Yeah, I know I’m being a whiny American, but people gotta wash those pattywackers, especially after number two.

The heat was a huge problem. Living in AZ, I’m used to heat and high humidity during the summer, but being in a room with no open window and no fans was brutal. You try to cope with it, but everyone there was on their very last nerve, which is what probably precipitated the gun fight later.

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