I miss the piazza
by Tony Peters on October 26, 2006
well after 22 hours in transit I have returned from Sardinia to the land of really bad Capoccino. I spent my birthday (Saturday) sitting in the Piazza in La Maddalena drinking Capoccino...there really isn't any comparision to the wonderful sense of relaxation that I felt there. Even the half day we spent taking the train all over Rome during our layover was sooo much more low key than a similar adventure in the US would be. Walking into a supermarket in Italy is grand adventure in eating cheese, olives, deli meats wine...the wine was amazing, $4 a bottle for wine that we can't get for $20 here in the states. Sadly I wasn't able to bring any back with me. To answer Jakie's question as for what I do and why I fly around the world at a moments notice. Well I guess the easiest decription is that I do repairs and quality assurance on submarine periscopes. When a deployed Submarine breaks down I fly out and repair and recertify so that they are ready for sea. Which means I need to keep a bag packed but I also get to see some cool places. When I was stationed in Pearl Harbor I traveled to places like Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Thailand and sadly GUAM. Now here on the atlantic side to the Navy I get to see places like Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Baharain, UAE, Diego Garcia, Scotland, England and Norway...hopefully I will see more of these places. Now before any of y'all think that I'm living too much of the good life on your dime, I will say that there are times that I have flown halfway around the world to work 20 hour days for a week to fix a problem and have barely gotten them fixxed before the boat pulls out. Sometimes the work is easy and you know what needs to be fixxed sometimes it takes every waking moment to repair the boat and put them back on mission. My reputation was made a few years ago when I made the right decision at a very unpopular time and was over rulled because I was too junior (and couldn't posible know what I was talking about)...unfortunatly for the Navy my opinion was correct and 6 weeks later it cost the Navy a million dollars instead of a week's delay. When I leave on one of these trips for all the fun I have to be right about whats wrong and how to make it right 100% of the time so that the Sub can go back to work. What scares me more than anything is being wrong so while I may talk up the fun stuff I do when I travel the reason that leave home is to insure that the boat I am going to can return to it's job in the shortest amount of time. That said if "Any" of you has the chance to visit Sardinia its beautiful, I highly recomend that you drink the house reds, they are cheap and amazing...and San Georgio's restaurant in Palau makes a killer scallop/mushroom fettaccini.
Two Replies to I miss the piazza
Tony Peters | October 27, 2006
I have the utmost respect for thse that put to sea aboard a submarine...I however would have to be tied up and knocked out before I ever went to sea on one...those things scare the crap out of me.
vagabond-punk
The musings of Tony Peters, a perpetual child, no matter where I am I will find a way to climb something or go skateboarding Read more »
My Suitcase
OK my trip around the Mediterranean sea was pleasant enough, Cyprus would be a great place to visit anytime not in the winter. Less than 20% of the city of Limasol was open, which made doing anything including eating an adventure. Lots of ruins, did anyone know that Cyprus is/was the birthplace of Aphrodite, I didn't. Go »more liquid metal
My sculpture Professor decided that the burner we use for melting metal wasn't working out well, since it was designed for a forge and not a furnace he had a furnace burner made.....it used to take hours to melt 20lb of bronze, it took us 40 minutes yesterday. I have never seen the crucible as hot as it was. Go »post pain pump
spending nearly a day on a Morphine pump was great but, it did little to prepare me for being out of the hospital or for that matter give me any idea just how much pain I was going to be in. Before I left the hospital my wife (who is a Nurse, the Pain Management Nurse at the hospital and I worked out this plan for the meds I was gonna need over this 1st week of my recovery...well that slowly disintegrated yesterday afternoon and by midnight I was in tears while my GSP sat with me licking my face...2 Go »Pain on a whole new level
good afternoon/evening folks something happened on the way to work this morning, I touched my brakes and either my tires were cold or I hit some sand, the next thing I knew I was on the ground with my bike on top of me. The end result is I broke my right ankle. It's swollen a bit today and likely needs surgery I have an ortho appointment on monday and hopefully surgery on tuesday. Go »problems within problems
I read Daily Beast for mush of my news because I like the tone and because there aren't many conservatives left who don't deal exclusively in hate (Hannity Rush etc) I actually used to consider myself a conservative but I can't reconcile their embrace of ignorance nor their dismissal of a changing word. Anyway Meghan McCain wrote an interesting piece on the old guard's disregard for the internet Go »
Lori Lancaster | October 27, 2006
[hidden by author request]