Here we are in Athens - the people in this snap are a mixture of drunken street people and highly qualified nuclear technicians... what's so sad is that for the most part they are indistinguishable. - to give you a clue, 2 of these guys are Nukes.
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Time for a quiz
Is this disgusting person, cradling a bottle of cheap Greek wine, a:
- A. drunken bum who makes this bench his home?
- B once respectable citizen who has now sunken to the lowest depravities of opium and liquor?
- C. highly trained nuclear technician, entrusted by the Navy to operate an umteen megawatt Reactor?
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1979 in the Bahamas. Hard to see it - but we've got a bit of a riot going on in the foreground of sailors off the IKE. Doesn't the IKE make a nice backdrop for this photo?
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Even the swimming pools in Monaco were topless!
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God only knows where this is... possibly in Capri. (Major Mike, Jeff, PJ, and Charlie)
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Will at Capri... Capri was such an excellent place - I can't believe we spent as much time in the gut of Napoli as we did - when Capri and Sorrento were so close. - I don't know what the banner is across the rocks - but it was rumored that there was to be a Frank Zappa concert - so maybe that was advertising..
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Look at the cliffs at the top left of the picture - it appears as if 3 drunken sailors have climbed the cliff.
Surely they are not so brain damaged as to consider diving off a hundred foot cliff into the rocky water below?!??!
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Yep... There they go - that's Major Mike in the air, me next, and Will Paul third. The climb up the face of the cliff was so perilous and would have been even more treacherous trying to climb down that the only safe way down was to take ones chances with jumping so as to avoid the rocks in the water.
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A couple of German beauties were there sun bathing topless - We were really pissed when the Italians made them cover up!
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Capri
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Will and I rented mopeds in one of the islands in the Caribean... Either I've just been kicked out of this bar or I'm trying to regain some equilibrium prior to hopping back on my bike. The fact that they drove on the left didn't help much. This place was the first time in my life where I've picked up a hitch hiker and he's actually asked to be let off prior to reaching his destination.
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Dead Sea - Israel
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Passed out, drunk sailor in Taranto, Italy
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Quiche-Man doesn't look in too good a shape - He was actually one of the more respectable sailors - so it's every bit as likely that he's sleeping instead of passed out.
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One of the more beautiful women in Egypt
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Will and Mombo at the Pyramids
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Mombo, myself, and Will.
Sorry, don't know the names of the camels..
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Egypt
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Egypt
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Egypt
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Norfolk - Just kidding, Egypt
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Great Lakes, IL.
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The reason I took this picture is not because of the beautiful vista... A favorite sport of ours when we rented cars was for the passenger to yank up on the emergency brake. This caused the car to spin out and very nearly topple over. That's what happened in this picture - you can see the car faced the wrong way as the result of spinning 180 degrees. That's Will P. as the driver. Note - my beer bottle by the front tire. The enlightened Greeks have No DUI or "Open Container" laws! Unless of course, those laws are written in Greek - in which case how would you expect us to know about them!
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More fun with rental cars.. This time we are in Israel.
Here's a bit of advice: If you are ever in Israel and start to drink a liquor called "Arack" LISTEN TO THE BAR KEEP WHEN HE TRIES TO CUT YOU OFF AFTER ONLY 2 SHOTS. I ended up drinking a mere 4 shots of this vile liquor and have never been more shit-faced in my life! It turns out that Arack not only contains highly distilled spirits but has a bit of a turbo charge in the way of OPIUM!
Anyway back to the rental car. 3 of us rented this car; Myself, Jake, and Mombo (pictured) While driving around trying to find our way back to the ship, Mombo declares himself to drunk to drive. Even though I'm 80 pounds lighter than Mombo and have drunk every bit as much - I declare myself fit to drive. Mombo and I hop out to swap. I had thought this was to be merely a simple exchange - but Mombo takes this opportunity to relieve himself. You would think that considering there were only 3 of us in the car - I would notice that someone was missing.... but I didn't. We end up leaving poor Mombo somewhere in the middle of Israeli desert while we head back to the ship... I vaguely remember doing some "off-roading" on the way home - and that is what must have caused our oil-pan to rupture. Even though all of the oil drained out, I still kept driving (after all it was only a rental). Somewhere back in Haifa the engine finally does something really bad - I think it shot a rod - anyway, we destroyed the car (it had less than 5,000 Km on the odometer). The next morning, I found the car, spent a while cleaning out the vomit, and then called the rental to turn it in and get a new car. The bastards downgraded me to a shittier car!
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Libert ferry leaving IKE
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This liberty ferry destroyed its gangplank
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Leaving Marroco - Aren't the colors in this photo beautiful?
when I was there, I had assumed all of the brilliant colors were due to the massive quantities of hashish I had been ingesting - now that I see the picture, I guess the colors really were that beautiful.
Street vendors would come up to you in Marocco, offering to sell chunks of hash. What we would do is hold it up to our noses to smell it to see if it was good and surrepticiously take a bite. - Ended up eating a hell of a lot of hash!
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When you take a picture, most people smile.... sailors flip the bird.
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Monacco
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I think we are in Naples, that is Pete and myself.
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Myself, Pete R., and Charlie. - We met up with these two Italians (wearing our covers) in Napoli. Why is Pete wearing a jar-head's cover? you ask
We had just had an altercation with some marines - and one of them ended up losing his hat. - Pete returned the trophy to the grunt on the ship the next day...
God love the Marines - but man are they idiots...We came across the marines and one of us informed them "Marines Suck" or some such nonsense.. For some reason, the marines interpeted this as a provocation... I know, if someone said something similar about the Navy - the only reason I would get in a fight is if I didn't think he was being disrespectful enough of the Navy.
Anyway, our fight with the marines was little more than a shoving match... one of them lost his hat.
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Will and I took a visit to Pompeii. On the way back, this man offered us a lift in his donkey cart.
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Lisbon as seen from a motor whale boat (WTF is a whale boat? - but that's what they were called)
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Back in Egypt - that's me at the very top of the pyramid.
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A port visit in Florida, we rented a silboat for the day. The guy standing aft, hanging onto the backstay is Ray Bratcher - poor bastard was seasick the whole time. As you can see, we're on a port tack - and judging from the position of the boom, I'd say a broad reach... So stationing the seasick guy on the aft, port quarter was probably not the wisest... the crew: Jimmy Duke, Will Paul, Don Vaughn at the helm, Cliff Baker, Ray Bratcher, and Jim Riha.
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Singapore - I think
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Antigua. Four of us chartered a sailboat and spent 3 straight days living aboard - a superb time. The vessel behind me is one that PJ and Major Mike rented - The captain of that vessel used to run explosives - and there was substantial weaponry aboard.
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Sorrento - I think.. and it looks like I'm trying to hit off that joint that Charlie is bogarting.
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This sequence of 2 photos is one of my favorites
We're in Taranto, Italy eating in a nice restaurant. At the next table are these two E-1's - probably 18 years old. You can see that these guys haven't even finished a bottle of wine and already one of them has passed out.
The next picture is even better.
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To be a "true" sailor, one has to have passed out and slept in ones own vomit at least once.
Here we see this sailor doing just that (the puddle of spaghetti-vomit under his head is hard to see in this photo). The poor waiter of the restaurant didn't know how to deal with this situation.
Everyone knows that in circumstances such as this, the proper etiquette calls for dragging the drunken sailor out of the restaurant, rifling through his pockets for anything of value and then tossing him out into the gutter.
Taranto was a new port visit for us - so the proprietor hadn't yet developed these "people" skills.
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Took this shot in Taranto... Normally at fleet landing, when I see a sailor lying in a Stokes stretcher, my first inclination is to suspect he's drunk. But I think in cases such as those - they place you face down so you don't choke on your own vomit. Either this guy has rolled over or he's really not a drunk |
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