My how times have changed

Remember the good old days when everyone in New York was a Yankees fan (and NO ONE admitted to being a Mets fan?). Times have changed as evidenced by the defeat of the Yankees at the hand of the Detroit Tigers. The St. Louis Cardinals just recently defeated the Mets in game 5 of the NL Championship series to come to a 3-2 lead agains the Mets. I wonder if in game 6 (and the the Mets win) in game 7 of the NL Championship series, if all of New York will become Mets fans (imagine the irony).

Update: The Mets won game 6 to tie it 3-3, and then game 7 was tied 1-1 up until the 9th inning..when the cardinals pulled ahead to win 3-1

World Series: Detroit Tigers vs St. Louis Cardinals.

Homeward Bound

We just left Rota, Spain and are on our transit across the Atlantic Ocean to our home port of Norfolk, VA at the Navy Base there. Just a week and a half left or so until we're finally home in America.

Rota was nice, I wish we would have had more time. My junior and I went out and enjoyed a brew at this Irish pub (Paddy's) in the tourist section of Rota, we then wandered and had a bottle of wine with a sampler of local cheeses and sausages. We thought the place was a place to eat, but that's all it turned out to be. The wine was good (all I remember was it was a white), the cheese was dry, and I was already heavily buzzed so I don't remember much of it, and the sausages were good, too. We enjoyed one last drink @ Champions, the bar at Naval Station, Rota before heading back to the ship. Not much time to do anything when you only have a few hours because we were still standing sea watches. Oh well...

Pictures

Here's a few pictures for you extremely loyal (but extremely rare it seems) fans/readers!

An odd sight anywhere in the States, a local government official for tourism set up in the Ibn Batuta Mall near Jebel Ali took a break for religious duties.
I hate it when I forget to write down a ship's name, I believe this was after supplying the USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike group most probably in Gulf of Oman or Indian Ocean, most likely either the USS Nashville (LPD 13), USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41).
(Some help would be appreciated!) An Owl who showed up on board, somewhere between Jebel Ali, UAE and Djibouti, Africa. I took this picture just after an abandon ship drill.

In formation with and supplying cargo to the USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike group, the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) behind me (for those that don't know, those are two of our ship's liferafts right in front of me), if I remember correctly, this was in the Red Sea after they returned from the Mediterranean after helping with the evacuation of Lebanon.

Mediterranean

We just left Augusta Bay, Sicily. I wish I had chosen to go to Syracuse rather than Catania, it was a little dirty, and early evening nothing was going on besides. Anyway...We have one more port left before heading home to Norfolk, and that is Rota, Spain. It's none too pleasant that we're only getting overnighters, especially when I have the 12-4 watch (overnighters we don't break sea watches to port watches...so we have to maintain the 4 on 8 off instead of port 8 on 16 off, giving us more time to go do stuff).

Oh well, the Navy Exchange in Rota is pretty good. The hours close the place too early so I hope that we pull in early enough to be able to use it (if not the comissary, than the SightnSound + Uniform center). Probably won't be enough time to actually go into town and enjoy the local scenery. After that it should only be another week and a half (at the most) before we get back to Norfolk!