Halfway Day

Well, 3 days ago marked the halfway day for deployment. Over the hump. It feels good, but it’s tough to know that we still have 90 days left (well, 87 now). These days in the middle of deployment are really the dog days of deployment—where you’re far enough away from home to be run down and tired, where you’re homesick but busy. All the while, you’re not close enough to coming home that you sense you’re almost there. It just kinda drags. I’m sure it’s how baseball players feel in the weeks after the All-Star break.
But we trudge on. It helps to have most of our in-port time during months 3 and 4 of our 6-month deployment. We have been underway for a few days to conduct some submarine exercises with the Chilean Navy, but after this week, we have an 18-day stretch with only 2 underway days. The variety helps things to move faster.
Prior to this underway time, we were moored in Concepcion, Chile for a week. There were lots of things to do in this city. South America seems to love casinos, because they’ve been in every port we’ve visited, much to the detriment of my bank account (except for last port, where I made up for it, thankfully). We were moored next to a small mountain, which I got to run up to the top of—a very cool (and tiring) experience. We had a wardroom social with officers on a Chilean Frigate. They proceeded to challenge us to chugging contests and drank us all into oblivion. Who knew Chileans could drink? It was very interesting to see their wardroom and ship and how similar it is to ours. Chileans had signs in English all over their ship. I asked why that was, seeing as their primary language was Spanish, and they told me that they were trained by the British Navy, hence the signs.
The weather is still cold, but it’s not as cold as it was down in the south of the continent. We’re transiting north at such a slow pace, that their winter is catching up with us faster than we are running away from it, so temperature differences haven’t been too noticeable. In about a month and a half, it will be back to ungodly heat. The temperature differences have thrown my body out of whack. I keep thinking it’s Christmastime soon, but I have to stop and remind myself that back home, it’s the middle of the summer. The warm weather will help with that problem.
Finally, a note about Concepcion’s mall: it rocked. Notably, they had two Dunkin’ Donuts (get it together, San Diego—Chile has more Dunkin’s in one mall than you do within a 500 mile radius) and Nuts 4 Nuts vendors everywhere. For anyone who’s been to NYC, they know Nuts 4 Nuts sell those hot honey roasted peanuts on street corners. They were everywhere here in Chile. They were a nice taste of home. Unfortunately, the Dunkin didn’t sell coffee. I know, I know… That’s like having a McDonalds without hamburgers, but it’s true. Just lattes, cappuccinos and donuts. But it was still good to see—I’ll take what I can get.