JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 13, 2006
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This image from STS-1 reminds me of something from the Taylor. We were in Gitmo during shakedown and the evaluators had the windows on the bridge covered up. We had to leave port like that, essentially flying by instrumentation and charts. While that memory would represent many different experiences from flight training, I have started wondering the past few hours if I was on STS-1 when it went up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Columba.sts-1.training.triddle.jpg
STS-1 crew in Space Shuttle Columbia's cabin. Astronauts John W. Young [left] commander and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, are the prime crew members for NASA's first Space Shuttle flight, STS-1. Here, they are logging time in the Shuttle orbiter Columbia in the orbiter processing facility [OPF] at the Kennedy Space Center [KSC].
JOURNAL ACHIVE: July 17, 2006
Now I understand why Microsoft created that area at the entrance I walked through every day to work. They called it "Mission Control." To my right as I was walking out of the building, they had a large photo of three enlisted U.S. Navy sailors saluting. I saw that same photo on the classmates.com website. One day, I became convinced they even had a hidden camera in my Jeep. One clue was something Vince Maraia kept asking me about the dashboard.
I'm beginning to think that all those times I was sick with what I thought was the flu, were actually the result of being poisoned. I was watching something on tv the other day about a woman who poisoned her husband with anti-freeze. The symptoms of anti-freeze poisoning are similar to the flu, according to that tv episode. That may explain why I was thinking about that sometime last year, someone was trying to tell me something.
This may explain some thoughts I have been having about the F-16 that I cannot yet fully explain. I thought of it when I saw a certain type of boat on tv the other day. I also remembered something I wrote last year about feeling as though I was trying to drive a boat that was still on the trailer. I think that was from a dream where John Connor jumped out of the boat and was running away. Anyway, something about the F-16 associates in my mind with sitting on the front end, the pointed end, of a boat, such as a large Bayliner on a lake, and trying to steer it from there.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 17, 2006
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/60481d.htm
Proclamation 4847 -- National Safe Boating Week, 1981
June 4, 1981
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Those involved in recreational boating should always remember that the primary responsibility for safety rests with the individual. And while a cruise can be a wonderful experience for one person or an entire family, it can also result in tragedy.
Aware of the need for boating safety, the Congress enacted the joint resolution of June 4, 1958 (36 U.S.C. 161) as amended, requesting that the President proclaim a National Safe Boating Week.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week beginning on June 7, 1981 as National Safe Boating Week.
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I am growing increasingly certain that everyone else in this homeless shelter is also a 40-something Top Gun Falcon/Tomcat-driver commando-sniper astronaut guided-missile-destroyer Commanding Officer military lawyer. That would explain why I am here.
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July 19, 2006
I started thinking yesterday about a scene from "Escape From L.A." It's that one where Plissken is on that basketball court and has to score a certain number of points before the clock runs out. I am wondering if I did something like that, in that I scored several points in the final minutes or at least made a game-winning buzzer beater, while in a game with the USNA basketball team.
I haven't seen the movie, but I don't think it is a coincidence this guy who played Napoleon Dynamite looks a lot like my former co-worker at Microsoft, Jon Langdon.
Langdon is the guy who I quipped to the waitress something about him being my youngest son from my third wife. He is also the guy that was over at my apartment one evening, that first one at Limestone, who seemed to be a little too enthusiastic about the "Ambiguosly Gay Duo" that was about to come on Saturday Night Live. There was some other stuff too, like the time well before that when he was standing there looking awkward and Grace Stahre said something about a "friend" she had, coincidently Langdon's age, who had some kind of gay fantasy. One other time, he said he was from some kind of military academy but Grace was quick to point out that he didn't graduate from it. There was some other stuff I can't remember at this moment. And what is it about "Preston"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_dynamite
Napoleon Dynamite is a film directed by Jared Hess. The movie is based on the short film, Peluca, which he directed at Brigham Young University with Jon Heder. Napoleon was then filmed in the summer of 2003 in Jared's childhood hometown of Preston, Idaho.
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July 21, 2006
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Something has been telling me to think more about my memory of seeing on the news that the Stark had been hit. As I wrote earlier, there is glaring discrepancy there, probably intentional, about my memory on that topic. I was talking to TM3 Preston Lee about it in our barracks in Orlando. We had a tv in the room that we watched for the news. But I was in Orlando in 1986. In May of 1987, I was still in Dam Neck, VA. That would have been right around the time I would have graduated and would have been going back to Arkansas for a 30-day leave. I think it was July 1987 when I reported to Wainwright in Charleston. The Wainwright, as I have pieced it together over the years while I was still believing I had been with that crew, was selected to deploy to the Arabian Gulf as a direct result of the strike on the Stark, thus giving the Iraqis an edge over the Iranians in the Tanker War. Could the name "Preston" actually represent some kind of memory about "pressed on," as in "I pressed on with the attack" despite some reason I may have had to not continue.
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July 24, 2006
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Correction: I only have 5% more privacy here. That may change though because I am reasonably certain there is a hidden camera in my room somewhere. I have absolutely no doubt there is a listening device in there somewhere. I can't even read the newspaper without thinking someone is noting what I read.
At least I can now turn off the light switch when I want to go to sleep. That is a remarkable improvement. Now if I just had a television and my own internet connection, my imprisonment would be slightly more tolerable. "Tolerable," of course, is relative to the intolerable environment of having no private life.
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July 25, 2006
I was thinking this morning or last night about all that commotion in the Ironman community a few years ago about people racing under other people's name. That would seem to tie in with my theory about Tom Warren and Tom Watson. They are probably real people, but I think they know I was there. Not exactly clear on this, but it means something. I suspect that people were all talking about something along these lines and that produced the buzz about the "phantom" competitors.
This morning, after I left the VA, I started thinking about this memory I have of Florida in 1984 and its possible symbolism to reality. It was shortly after I got out of boot camp. I rented a Mustang convertible and took a trip to Daytona Beach. I made two separate trips over one weekend. I remember sitting in the car on base in front of the base club and talking briefly to a guy I went to Ashdown High School with but didn't know very well. The first trip was with Chris Root from boot camp and we went somewhere on the east coast, I guess Daytona, and then traveled across state to I think Tampa. The second day, I don't remember sleeping much, I drove back to Orlando and dropped off Chris and one or more other people that went with us, I can't remember who else was there. Early that morning, I think it was Sunday, I was sitting in that base club parking lot again and I ran into a couple other guys I went to boot camp. We drove out to Daytona for the day. The important part of all this seems to be early that next morning when we were driving back. The other guys were asleep and I dozed off while driving down the interstate. I either woke up on my own or the guy in the passenger seat woke me up just in time to keep us from hitting a pylon of an interstate overpass. He asked me if I was all right. I don't think the other guy even woke up. After I remembered that memory, I had the sense that the Mustang represented an aircraft. These people, in this memory and other memories, in the passenger seat represent a crewperson as opposed to a co-pilot. The Mustang, as opposed to a pickup with its cargo bed which could represent wing pylons for bombs, represents, possibly, a fighter or attack jet on a mission where speed and agility are the most important characteristics. The lack of a cargo bed would suggest that it carried no weapons and was possibly on some kind of reconnoisance mission, to take photos of some object, for example. The reason it was a convertible Mustang, I suspect, may be that it represents some memory that tugs and nags my mind about having the canopy blown off my aircraft at some time. The top was down. The part of this memory of him asking me if I was all right represents, I suspect, us trying to recover physically from the concussion of the explosion that tore off the canopy. Incidents and experiences such as those are probably more stressful to relive than to actually experience, especially in my mental state of knowing but not remembering. The passenger, in this memory in the car, had no control over the car and needed to get me alert to regain control of the car. The pylon of the overpass we almost hit represents that we almost crashed to the ground. I don't know what the third guy represents, ground control perhaps? We could have been in an aircraft with room for three people, but that doesn't feel right. I don't remember anything after that.
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July 26, 2006
I was thinking last night about a memory featured prominently in my symbolic memory. It is of a time in 1985 when I was on the Taylor. It was during that same deployment when I watched the Estocin run aground in Key West. We were traveling along shoulder to shoulder with a Soviet battlegroup that was touring the oil pltform fields off the coast of Texas and Louisiana. During that time, I still worked for the Boatswain's Mates, but I was assigned to a 90-day tour of the mess decks, as all junior crewmen had to complete. I was working every day on the mess decks as a dishwasher. There was three of us in there and I remember one of them telling me "happy birthday". The part of this memory that seems to be operative is that I remember thinking several times that I turned 20 years old in "the Gulf." There seems to be a process there to makes me want to, that forces me to think that it was the Gulf Of Mexico. If I need to be forced to think I was in the Gulf Of Mexico for my 20th birthday, does that mean I needed to forget that I was actually in the Arabian Gulf for my 20th birthday? After I thought about that for a while, a few minutes ago I started wondering if it was actually my 21st birthday that I turned in the Gulf. Then I thought that maybe it was both. Maybe in March 1979 and March 1980, I was in the Arabian Gulf. I don't know why I would be there in '79, other than some kind of midshipman training. In March of 1980, when I would have turned 21, I could have been there in preparation for the attempted hostage rescue, Operation Eagle Claw.
According to this wikipedia article, that there were 53 hostages at the Tehran embassy being held by the radicals. According to this article, there were 52 that were releaed, but at the time of the rescue attempt, there were 53 captives. My starting salary at Microsoft in December 1998 was $53,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_One
http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/list_of_hostages.phtml
This reference to the Great Salt Desert, the staging area for the rescue attempt, reminds me of that memory on the Taylor. There was a problem with the fresh water machines and we couldn't wash clothes for a while. As I was standing lookout on the bridge at least once a day, my clothes were filthy from evaporated salt water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
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On the night of April 24, 1980, as the first part of the operation, a number of C-130 transport airplanes rendezvoused with eight RH-53 helicopters at an airstrip in the Great Salt Desert of Eastern Iran, near Tabas.
For some reason, the flag of Turkey reminds me of that camping trip that I went on with Randy Cole and his father, who was a surveyor. That may have actually been sometime around 1980, I need to think more about that to remember for sure. We camped on a mountain in Central- or North Arkansas that was called "where the moon drug." It was a reference to how there was a slope in between two peaks of the mountain, which formed a crescent shape, not unlike the crescent moon. I'm thinking it has something to do with being in Iran in 1980. Also, after I saw that flag of Turkey, I was reminded of a couple girls Mogge and I were hanging out with one day in Italy. We met them while we were visting Pompeii. The Wainwright was in nearby Naples. There is something about them that I associate with Turkey. They had either just come from there or they were on their way there.
http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa060401b.htm
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July 27, 2006
I was thinking last night about a couple scenes from recent Star Trek movies. One was that scene from "Generations" where Kirk goes into that deflector control room to make some kind of fix to a system. I am wondering if that relates to what I read about the problem with the landing gear on Columbia during STS-1, assuming that info from wikipedia is even true as I haven't verified it yet. The second is from "First Contact" where Riker and LaForge ride along on the first flight of the Phoenix and how none of the people in the context of the movie, would know they were there because they were from the future.
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In a way, you could think of the Columbia as "Enterprise-B." According to this list of shuttle flights, the Enterprise conducted 5 atmospheric flights prior to STS-1, which used Columbia as the vehicle. In a sense, Columbia was the second shuttle. It is also interesting to note that Columbia returned on April 14, 1981, which was a Tuesday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Generations
Release date November 18, 1994
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Not long after the USS Enterprise-A completed its final mission ... Captain James T. Kirk, Captain Montgomery Scott and Commander Pavel Chekov attend the christening of its successor, the USS Enterprise-B ... On its maiden voyage, the Enterprise receives a distress call from two ships transporting El-Aurian refugees from their homeworld after it was destroyed by the Borg. Captain Harriman debates for a moment, considering the new vessel's diminished capabilities (few vital systems, such as tractor beams, had been installed, as this was something of a test run -- something of a running joke holds that everything will be installed on Tuesday), but decides to respond to the call and help the ships. Upon arrival, the crew find that the two ships are slowly being destroyed by a mysterious orange ribbon of energy: intense gravometric forces in the vicinity of the energy are rapidly compromising the ships' hull integrities, which will eventually lead to complete hull collapse, an explosion, and the death of everyone on board.
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78 years later
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[There is something about this too that I can't quite explain, perhaps I crashed landed once in a fighter in a similar fashion:]
A harrowing three minutes later, in which the saucer soars to the surface of Veridian III and slides along the ground for quite some time, removing all vegetation and a significant amount of soil from a long swath, the section shudders to a halt. It is quite obvious that the Enterprise will never fly again.
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Picard "awakes" to find himself celebrating Christmas with the family he never had -- a wife, children
In the photo of this Pegasus rocket, there is a guy in a blue flight suit near the port wing of the rocket. He kind of looks like me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_rocket
The Pegasus rocket is a winged space booster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pegasus_rocket.jpg
Pegasus rocket on the ground
This seems important:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_rocket
"OCA", Orbital Carrier Aircraft
Launch History
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June 1994- STEP-1: Failure (destroyed during first-stage flight)
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/pegsusxl.htm
1994 Jun 27 - - 21:15 GMT.
LV Configuration: Pegasus XL
s/n F6
Launch Site: Vandenberg
Launch Complex: RW30/12
FAILURE: Destroyed on launch
STEP 1 Spacecraft: Eagle
Payload: STEP M1 / P90-1
Destroyed on launch
That is almost 8 miles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_rocket
The vehicle is launched from another aircraft at approximately 40,000 feet (12,000 m)
http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back/news.206
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In June, the first launch of an advanced Pegasus XL from the L-1011 Stargazer carrier plane ended in failure; the cause has been identified as aerodynamic problems due to faulty hydro simulations (no wind tunnel testing was done).
http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Jun-1996/0230.html
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"*Stargazer* is a specially modified Lockheed Martin L-1011 TriStar jumbo jet
that's based at Meadows Field in Bakersfield," stated Jim Spellman, executive
director for the National Space Society's Western Spaceport Chapter in Kern,
Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo county.
"It was named by OSC team members in honor of the first 'starship' commanded
by fictional character Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the *Star Trek: The Next
Generation* television series," Spellman added. The aircraft serves as the
"first stage" by carrying the Pegasus XL rocket up to its 40,000 foot release
point over the Pacific Ocean near Vandenberg AFB in Santa Barbara county.
"Upon release from *Stargazer* and a five-second freefall, the Pegasus XL's
solid propellant rocket ignites
And, yeah....if you look at Generations in context of the U.S. Navy traditions and apply that to the early days of the shuttle..... The Enterprise was the lead ship during the atmosphere tests. In the U.S. Navy, the following ships are listed as of the "Class" of that first ship. And the shuttles Enterprise and Columbia were similar in appearance, which would make them of the same class. And since Enterprise was effectively out of service by the time Columbia flew, at least so considered by the time of "Generations," Columbia could be considered the replacement of the Enterprise, as opposed to a second operating unit. So, in a sense, Columbia was Enterprise-B.
Maybe, indeed, that is what the crash landing of the saucer section in Generations was all about. I'm thinking that it reflects something that happened to me. Possibly the Pegasus rocket exploded, took out the engines, maybe part of a wing, then we plummeted almost 8 miles before I managed to glide us down to a crash landing in a forest. I have other thoughts that seem connected to that, but I just can't remember what really happened.
"Generations" was out in 11/18/94 and that "Stargazer" Ten-Eleven incident was 6/27/94. That would give them plenty of time to incorporate it into the movie.
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I am 4% less aggravated at having to live in this place as I was at Pioneer Square.
When I look at a map of the Falklands Islands, I usually, seems like 'always' actually, find myself looking at a place named Goose Green. Just now I remembered a time I took a girl on a date to a comedy club in Charleston. I remember the comedian making a funny local joke. He said: Welcome to Charleston. Gateway to Goose Creek.
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July 28, 2006
I think I understand now why, in the movie Waterworld, Deacon refers to The Mariner as the Gentleman Guppy.
There was that scene in Generations where Picard tells Riker that he learned long ago to not underestimate a Klingon. That may be a reference to Patrick Stewart learning that I had not actually died when the Ten-Eleven crashed in June 1994, if that is what really happened. They probably threw that reference out of sequence by then having Picard learn that his brother and nephew were killed in a fire. I suspect that they thought I had crashed and burned along with the Ten-Eleven, again, if that is what really happened. I am wondering if the aircraft crashed on a remote island or a remote area of forest and I had to wait there to be rescued. I am thinking, based on that train wreck in Unbreakable, that one other person survived the crash, but he later died from his injuries. I don't know. This may just be my imagination or I am actually remembering, but not remembering, real events from my real life.
And, in Generations, Picard manipulates the restraining latches on Soran's missile and it explodes on the pad. That is probably similar to what happened in that Pegasus launch in 6/94. The rocket didn't break away and/or it exploded directly under the aircraft or it took the Ten-Eleven farther up into the atmosphere. I am reminded of that scene in Independence Day where they couldn't break away from the latches inside the mother ship before firing the missile.
