Tales From The Travels

I’ve always been fascinated with the history of the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941. When I was stationed at Pearl Harbor I enjoyed going around the island and seeing the sights associated with the attack. My command, FICPAC, was located right across the street from the Arizona Memorial. I’ve read a number of books about the attack and will catch a show every now and then on TV. I recently saw one on the Military History Channel about the ‘Myths of Pearl Harbor’ and was interested in one particular statement they made. They said that only one battleship was lost in the attack – the Arizona. I always thought there was a second. Well, after checking I’ve learned that they were technically correct, the second ship was no longer classified as a battleship at the time of the attack. And therein lies a story.

One of the great places I enjoyed going to while in Pearl Harbor was Ford Island. This is the big island in the middle of the harbor. Today, it is a military housing complex with a few small commands. There’s a bridge connecting it to the main island today, but when I was there in the early-1980s the only way to the island was by ferry, which made it very private. I would take the ferry over and just walk around the island. It was very peaceful and tropical and no one ever bothered me when I went looking around at the sights.

Ford Island was a seaplane facility before and during the war and had large hangers and a runway. The runway has houses built on it now and no planes have landed there in decades. The hangars were still there, long since abandoned but not secured. I would walk around in these hangars, passing through the ready rooms and offices, imagining what it was like on that morning with the men scrambling to respond to the attack while avoiding the bombs and strafing runs at the same time. There are still bullet holes visible from the attack that made it easier to visualize. Standing there and seeing the ghosts in my mind, the attack was a lot less history and a lot more reality.

Working my way around the island, I came across some wreckage a memorial on the western side of the island. This was what remained of the USS Utah and the men that are still entombed within. The Utah was a former battleship (BB) that had been redesignated as a gunnery training ship (AG). So, technically, it was not a battleship when it was lost during the attack, so the show was correct.

The Utah was moored up at the berth on the west side of Ford Island in early December, 1941. When the attack occurred, the crew responded and tried to get the ship underway, but it took several heavy hits and began to take on water. Before long, it began to list and capsized shortly thereafter. Fifty-eight men died. At least one of them was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

At that time, the memorial consisted of a flag and plague. From the vantage point of the memorial, you would have been looking out across the Utah that morning towards the west, straight at the Japanese dive bombers that were coming in across the western locks of Pearl Harbor to seal the fate of the ship and crew. I asked around at my command and no one there even knew about it. Today, there is a new memorial that is more elegant, but still little known.

So, if you’re in Hawaii and are interested, ask about the USS Utah memorial on Ford Island.

I was certified for scuba diving while we lived in Taiwan when I was 15 and I’ve been diving on and off since then. I will go through long periods where it’s difficult to get do any, then a period where I get to do a bunch. Hawaii was a period of lots of diving. There was a group of us that did two dives almost every weekend. It was very good diving and you could just go in from the beach, making it a whole lot easier and cheaper than if we had to go in from a boat.

We tried different locations all around the island of Oahu and became very good at locating the best spots, including reefs that were mostly untouched and beautiful to go diving in. One location in particular was like something out of a movie with large stands of coral separated by channels of sand, providing a great variety of sealife and scenery to go exploring in. Another place consisted of lava tubes, tubes left in the rock when the lava solidifies around the outside and the liquid interior flows out. Cave diving can be very dangerous and requires special training and equipment, so we were not going to go diving in these tubes, but they provided neat ways to get in and out of the surf. You could just walk up to openings of these tubes, step in and then swim out through holes in the rock to the open water. Getting out was easy because the surf would just lift you up above the rocks and set you down. This was a great area for sealife because all of the holes and tunnels provided cover from predators.

We were doing an evening dive here one time, using flashlights, when we were swimming along the edge of the rocks. I was separated from my buddies by about 10 or 15 feet with them towards the open water to my right and the rocks to my left, when we spotted a school of fish just ahead of us with our flashlights. This school was going crazy for some reason and we were watching when this one fish suddenly came out right at me swimming as fast as it could. As I watched, this moray eel came out of the school and chased after the fish. The reason for the school’s agitation was suddenly clear. Now, these two were coming right at me! I tried to back out of the way, but I ran into the rocks and couldn’t go any further. But, they weren’t interested in me. They passed within arms reach and just kept going. I couldn’t see if the eel got dinner, or not. When we got back to the surface we were talking about it and my friends went, ‘Man! You sure were cool when that eel came at you!’ I had to confess that I tried my best to get the hell out of the way, but couldn’t.

Diving for shells became something to do for us. We weren’t exactly going crazy, but we did enjoy locating the occasional, beautiful shell to add to our collections. Among the best of these were cowries. These are shaped somewhat like pears except they are nearly flat on the bottom. One of the things that makes them desirable is that they are very shiny and free of any growth. This is because the animal that lives inside them will extend lips to either side and cover the shell with them. When you examine the shell, you can see a line near the top where the two lips meet. This makes them very attractive. They can also be quite large, maybe the largest shells in the Hawaiian waters.

These shells are prized not only by collectors and merchants for selling to tourists, but also by fishermen. Octopi feed on cowries and fishermen will string cowries in nets as bait. The octopus will wrap its arms around one and then use its hard, sharp beak to break open the shell and feed on the animal. You will often find cowries that have big holes in the tops where an octopus has fed.

We out scouting dive sites one day and saw these divers coming in with a bag of beautiful cowries. When we asked them where they got them, they pointed to the point of land at the mouth of the bay and told us they were out there. We immediately began scheming and planning our next dive. It was a long swim to get out there, so we scouted out a path that we could use to carry our gear and get close before entering the water.

We told all of our buddies about the idea and we had a big group show up the next week. We laboriously carried our heavy gear over the rocks out along the point before we got close enough we felt we could swim the rest of the way and entered the water. It was a fairly long swim from there, but not too bad and we made it easily. The bottom dropped off sharply from there and were exploring when we suddenly lost interest in seashells. The place was crawling with lobsters! I’m sure the dinner bell was going off in the heads of all of my buddies as soon as we saw them.

We were having a good time exploring and chasing lobsters when I realized I was almost out of air. This wasn’t right! I usually take a long time to use up a tank of air and we had been there only a few minutes. Then I realized the problem and knew we were in trouble. We had been so intent on what we were doing we didn’t notice that we had strayed into a bad current. It was taking all of our effort to fight it and, as a result, we were using up our air.

This wasn’t just any current. This was a very strong open ocean current that rages between the islands of Oahu and Maui, known locally as the Molokai Express. That’s because if you get caught in it the next stop is the island of Molokai, about 30 miles away. We really didn’t want to be swimming in this current.

We quickly tried to make a beeline for the bay, but it was pretty hopeless. I’m a very strong swimmer, but even with fins on and swimming as hard as I could I could see that I was going backwards. At this rate I’d be looking for a flight from Molokai back to Oahu by sundown. Assuming the sharks didn’t get me or I didn’t miss the island all together.

When you’re stuck in a current you don’t want to swim against it. Currents can be much stronger than you and will wear you out. This is the danger of a rip current at a beach. The thing to do is to swim perpendicular to the current until you get out of it. Our problem was there really wasn’t any where else to swim to. If we swam across the current it would take us into the surf crashing onto razor-sharp rocks. But, we clearly didn’t have an option and made for the rocks. We all managed to get out of the water, but I mean it when I say the surf was crashing and the rocks were sharp. We were beaten up, sliced up, and bloody when we crawled up on those rocks. Then, there was the hazardous climb over the rocks back to the path, carrying all of our gear. By the time we got back to our cars we were pretty worn out.

Just as we got back to the cars these fire engines came roaring up and the emergency team jumped out. They told us that someone had spotted these divers in trouble and had called in an emergency. Then the TV news team arrived with their cameras! They jumped out and started looking for something to film. The emergency crew was running around looking for divers in trouble and the news crew was running around after them, microphones in hand and toting cameras, just hoping for a hot story. We certainly didn’t want to end up on the evening news so we stood around joking and laughing like it was all normal day. They looked at us and talked with a couple of us before deciding we were a dead end. The firefighters finally decided there was no emergency and left. The TV guys were all disappointed there weren’t any dead bodies on the beach and packed their gear as well. As soon as they left we all just sat down, exhausted and a little shell shocked, and started licking our wounds.

Then we realized someone was missing. We didn’t all make it back. In all of the commotion with the emergency team we hadn’t taken a head count. We were now seriously concerned and were about to call the emergency team to come back when our missing buddy came walking up the road. He had actually been swept out to sea, but had managed to swim out of the current and ended up on the other side of the peninsula. He had stashed his gear and headed back to the cars for help. Ironically, he was the only one that wasn’t beaten all to crap. There wasn’t any surf on the other side and he found a nice place to get out.

We got his gear and then got out there. We sat around the rest of the afternoon with these dazed looks on our faces, retelling our stories to each other and drinking beer, but we were back diving the next weekend, just in a different location. We never did go back to that bay.

While I was stationed in Denver during the Fall of 1981, on my way to Pearl Harbor, I bought about 10 acres of land way out in the Rockies. It was a beautiful piece of land and very secluded. One side bordered a national forest and there were no neighbors within a half mile. I could go out there camping and not see a soul the whole time. And, that’s just what I did every chance I got.

I started camping very young, well before I was six, and I have enjoyed it ever since. It is just an uplifting experience, a communal with nature type of thing. The chance to go camping in the Rockies like that was such a great opportunity I couldn’t pass it up. So, I got me a little pup tent, a sleeping bag and some gear and I would go out there for a couple of weekends every month and a day trip or two when I couldn’t get away for an overnighter.

I had a routine where I would play Beethoven’s 6th symphony when I left the main road. There was just enough time for it finish as I drove onto my property. Then, until I left, I would make as little noise as possible. I was leaving the modern world behind, not taking it with me.

There was no lack of fire wood on the property, so I always had a nice camp fire going. That’s part of the ambience of camping, of course. Mostly, I just went out there to relax, read, hike through the hills, and simply enjoy being in the Rockies. Some times I would meet people taking walks along the dirt road and we might chat some, but that was pretty rare. Mostly, I was by myself with no one else in sight. But, even here, I managed to find some adventures.

A small one was the night I woke up to the sound of coyotes howling off in the distance. I was enjoying the sound when one started howling about 10 feet away from my tent. You better believe that made me jump! I went out after daybreak and found its tracks in a sand bank. It looked like it came within 10 or 15 feet of the camp area, but never actually entered it. I’m sure it was drawn to the smell of my trash. It was probably the smell of a human that kept it from getting any closer.

Another time I was sitting around the campfire after dark when I heard something walking in the grasses. By the sound I could tell it had four legs and was big, but it was just outside the range of my campfire light and I couldn’t see it. I listened as it walked around, swish – swish – swish, then stop. It would stay still for a few seconds, then swish – swish – swish, and stop again. It went this way from one side of my camp to the other side, staying just outside the range of the campfire light the whole time, and then went on its way. I’m sure it was a bear, but I sure wasn’t going to go out there to find out. I looked around the next day but couldn’t find any tracks. The ground was too hard.

October rolled around and snow started showing up on the mountain tops, so I kept an eye on the weather. I drove a sports car and I knew I would never be able to get out if it snowed on me during the night. Then, I woke up one night when I was so cold I couldn’t sleep anymore. I got up and got the fire going to warm me up. I figured since I was just sitting there I would have a beer, but it was frozen when I opened it up. I set it in the fire to thaw it out. I figured that was the signal to hang up the camping for the season and that was the last time I ever camped there.

I took my ex there a few years later and she wasn’t impressed. It was too remote for her. That was my last visit. I had hoped to build a cabin out there and use it for vacations, but I could see that it wasn’t going to happen. So, I sold it. When you figure in taxes, finance charges, and realtors fees, I guess I lost a couple thousand dollars on the deal. But, it was worth every single penny. And more.

I arrived in Hawaii in March 1982 for a three-year tour of duty. My duty station was the Fleet Intelligence Center, Pacific (FICPAC), which has since been renamed the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific (JICPAC). It was housed in a windowless, four-story building in the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet compound right across the street from the Arizona Memorial. I had wanted these orders very badly and got them because I finished first in my class at the Intelligence Specialist ‘A’ school. So, I was really looking forward to this duty station and, in the end, it became just as wonderful as I had hoped. But, not at first. On that morning when I first reported in I ended-up walking right into one of the worst situations of my life.

There was this woman, Anita Cote (two-syllables) that was responsible for entering data to update a certain database. The database was owned by the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. and was used for a number of purposes, so they started getting upset when the database wasn’t being kept up to date. In all fairness to Cote, the job they gave her was simply too big for one person to do. In fact, we would eventually have dozens of people working it. Cote complained that it was impossible for her to do the job by herself, so they promised her the next three people to walk in the door. I was number three.

The problem with the situation was that Cote was a purely evil person. She is the only true sadist I’ve ever met and got a great deal of pleasure by causing other people pain and suffering. She may also have been the most successful liar I’ve ever met. She would say things that were so blatantly false I would think no one could possibly believe her, but they would! And, I would learn that this was only part of the problem.

The other two people in our group were both much junior to me. They were both seamen with about one year’s worth of experience. I was a second class petty officer and on my second enlistment with about 4 ½ years experience at the time. Cote was a first class petty officer and I think she had been in the Navy for about six years.

The first person to arrive was Ricky, a girl that was in my class at ‘A’ school in Denver and I knew her pretty well. She was a very nice, innocent kind of girl, but had a rebellious streak in her. She was into the punk culture and liked to color her hair and fingernails weird colors. That was OK out in town, but didn’t fly when she was in uniform. I liked Ricky, but Cote took an immediate dislike to her and would torture her, and I don’t mean that in the figurative sense.

The second person to arrive was Fred. Fred and I arrived at the same time and did our check-in together. We became good friends and keep in touch even today. At that time, he was still a wet behind the ears kid, fresh out of ‘A’ school and had never been out of southern California before joining the Navy.

Things were already stewing by the time Fred and I arrived. Ricky had been there for a couple of months and the situation between her and Cote had grown pretty bad. Cote was a complete power and control freak and she was given someone that she could dominate in the worst way. Given her taste for sadism, she would do and say things to Ricky just to beat her down. Over the next few months this would rise to a criminal level. It finally reached the point where Ricky was passing out. There was one time when a bunch of us went out one evening to Waikiki. I was driving and had dropped off the others and was taking Ricky home. She wasn’t saying anything and I just thought she didn’t have anything to say. But, when I took a turn she suddenly slumped over and I realized she was unconscious. I knew the apartment building she lived in, but not her apartment number, so I couldn’t reach her roommate. Eventually, I was able to get her to come around and tell me her apartment number and got her home safely. I insisted that she go to medical about it, but they didn’t find anything wrong with her and sent her back to work. I learned later that she had been having these problems for a while. Later, she was walking down the hallway and just passed out in mid-stride, collapsing in the middle of the hall. They kept her in the hospital after that. It was finally diagnosed that she was essentially having a nervous breakdown from the stress and torture she was experiencing. It was her mind’s way of dealing with it.

Fred was basically immune from Cote. This was a common tactic. The fact is that, as bad as it was for Ricky, it was open warfare between Cote and me and she needed to be able to point to someone and say, ‘But, I don’t have any problems with Fred! If I’m so bad, how come I don’t have problems with him? Chris is the problem, not me!’ It was a very effective argument, too, and the command leadership bought it. Fred got the benefit by not being a target. He saw all that was going on and really didn’t want to be subjected to that kind of treatment, so he kept his head down and mouth shut. One of the things I liked about Fred was his intelligence and common sense.

One source of the difficulty between Cote and me was the way she treated Ricky. I would stand up to her about it and we had some fights about it. I’m afraid it may have actually made things worse for Ricky because I think Cote would then get even more satisfaction out of torturing her. She wasn’t just causing one person pain, she was getting two at once.

But, that was only one problem. Cote was a manipulator and I was her inevitable victim. I was the person she could blame for everything, and she did. No matter what happened, she blamed me. Normally, this wasn’t a major deal because her claims were so wild they weren’t believable. But, she always seemed to pull it off, to my amazement and expense.

There was the time when we were put in extra hours until the data base was up to date. I was working late one night and was told I couldn’t go home until all the work was done. We had been putting in 16-18 hour days for a couple weeks and I was really worn out, but stayed until after midnight to get everything done. When I arrived in the morning I was called by the division officer, LT Black, to come into his office. Cote was already there when I went in. He began by asking me why I had disobeyed a direct order by not getting all of the data entered before going home the previous evening. I replied that I had. Cote insisted that I hadn’t and that she had checked the update log when she arrived and nothing was in it. I explained there were two logs, so two people could work at once and she had looked in the wrong one. When we went to a terminal, there was all of the data I had entered, just as I claimed. I also pointed out that we had to sign a log if we came or went after hours and the log would show what time I had left the night before. Cote turned to Black and told him I must have entered it all since I came in that morning and then had someone sign my name in the log to make it look like I had left late. I objected that there were probably 14 or 15 hours worth of work there and I had been in only 30 minutes. It was impossible for me to have done all that work that morning. I thought this would end it, but Black turned to me and told me he was upset with me for disobeying orders and that doing the work in the morning still didn’t excuse it.

I was floored! He actually believed her! Black would, in time, change and we ended-up establishing a good working relationship. We were talking about Cote one day and he apologized to me for the way he treated me during this period and said he just couldn’t explain how he could have believed her claims. He said it just happened. I swear, it was like she was placing a hex on people and I was the only one that could see it.

Then, things got bad.

One time, Cote and I were alone in a shop when she laid down on a table and hiked her skirt up, showing me her panties. She had been making increasingly explicit hints to me that she wanted me to go to bed with her, even though she was married and had a child. She wasn’t hinting any more. She told me that either I could screw her or she would screw me. Except she didn’t say ‘screw’, she was much more explicit in her choice of words. Well, I didn’t, and she did. She screwed me every way she could find. She did everything she could to make my life a living hell after that. Things were bad before, but now they proceeded to get a whole lot worse. I was taking it in the shorts so badly that my rear end puckered up every time I passed the building.

A common reaction I get from people when is, why didn’t I just go to bed with her? Sexual harassment isn’t about sex, but about power and control. Even before the term ‘sexual harassment’ was in vogue and long before the Tailhook incident, I realized that this was certainly the case here. She wanted control of me and I wasn’t going to let her have it. It would have been the end of my life as I knew it if I had given in. I would have been her total slave and she would have beaten me down, changing me into a different person. There’s no doubt that I made the right decision. The real problem is that I was put into a position where I had to make the decision in the first place.

I realized that my career was on the line and I was losing. I had to find another way to address this problem or I was done. I took a week’s leave and camped out on a remote military beach that I knew about. There were very few people that used this beach so I was mostly alone with the ocean and my books. I decided that I needed to fall back and regroup, so I went to familiar ground and took another look at the situation. One of the books I took with me had to deal with Chinese philosophy, an area I feel very comfortable with since my formative years in Taiwan. After several days of studying and recharging, I came across a statement that you must be like water and not like stone. The drop of water splashes on the stone, but it remains unchanged and, over time, will wear the stone away. As soon as I read it I knew I had found my solution.

When I returned to duty the next week I immediately went to Cote and asked for my assignment. Of course, she had some crap job that was below my paygrade and picked to drive me crazy. Instead of getting aggravated, I ran off to do the job as quickly as I could and to the very best of my abilities. Then, I ran back her to get my next job. I continued doing this and I could see that she was getting angrier and angrier every time I went back. She was trying to break me, but that wasn’t the way it was going. And, this made her really mad. She was trying to cause me pain, and it wasn’t working. She had lost her source of pleasure. She was getting more wound up every day, and the more I did this, the tighter the winding. Finally, one day she completely snapped. She was standing in the middle of the room and started just screaming at me at the very top of her lungs. She went on this crazy tirade and I just stood there without making a comment. Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing and were just watching Cote. When she was done I turned around and there was LT Black. I asked him who he believed now. He nodded at me and said he’d take care of it.

That was the beginning of the end for Cote. She was removed as my supervisor and I don’t think she ever supervised anyone else while I was at FICPAC. Eventually, she lost her clearance and was transferred. The last I heard of her was when someone told me they saw her working as a gate guard at Moffett Field, California. I told someone once of how I would kill her if I could find a way to get away with it. They told me I shouldn’t say something like that because someday someone’s going to kill her and I would be a suspect. I said that if they ever find her body in a ditch I want to make sure they came and told me about it.

She was the only true sadist I have ever met. She would inflicted pain on others for no other reason than the pure pleasure she got out of it. I meant it when I said I wished I could figure out a way to kill her. She is the only person I have ever felt that way about, and the truth is that I still feel that way about her after all these years because I’m convinced she is still out there treating other people the same way she treated us. I can forget about the way she treated me. I survived her and won. Live and learn. But, I can never forgive her for the way she treated others, especially Ricky. Ricky was a very sweet girl and never did anything to deserve the way she was treated. The last I time I talked with Ricky was years after I had left Pearl Harbor. She left the Navy, got married, settled down in Honolulu, and was doing quite well. She had a talk show on a local radio station for a while and when I last spoke to her was an assistant to a member of the Hawaiian legislature. I can truly say that I wish her the very best.

Fred made Senior Chief Petty Officer before being commissioned as a warrant officer. He retired from the Navy at the age of 37, and then got a job doing the same job in the same office, except as a civilian and making a lot more money. He’s still married to the same woman he met on the way to my going away party when we left Hawaii and their youngest child just graduated high school. We’re still good friends and see each other when we get a chance to.

I know that I get into a lot of bad situations because of bad decisions on my part. There have been times when I could have done things differently. My current situation with USD comes immediately to mind. I suppose I could have done things differently with Cote, too. I know now that I should have filed formal complaints against here early, but my experiences with formal complaints and observations of others that had made formal complaints didn’t encourage me to follow that line of action. Still, it would have been a better way to go. I didn’t have to fight. I could have been like Fred and kept low. But, I don’t think that would’ve worked. Cote needed someone to blame for everything and that was going to be me by virtue of my seniority. I couldn’t ask for a transfer, the command had made a promise to Cote and to DIA about the manning. I was stuck in that shop.

It’s possible that things could have been worked out in a better way, but having been there and having known Cote, I think the conflict was something I just was unable to avoid. It was going to happen to someone, somewhere, and I happened to be the unlucky stiff that walked in the door at the wrong time. The only alternative was to concede, and that’s not a choice I was going to make. I think this is one of those times when, through no fault of your own, you get stuck in a bad situation.

I was always pretty big on women’s rights before this incident, having been raised in a matriarchal family, but this was an experience that really me a believer. Sexual harassment is a terrible thing. It ruins people’s lives and destroys the workplace. It cannot be tolerated. I have since this incident stood up for women’s rights several times, including a major one at FICPAC a couple years later, and I’ve suffered the consequences. Those were certainly times when I made a choice, but I will never consider them bad choices. I’m not a crusader, but when the problem is on my desk, I’ll act on it, and I have. That’s something I’m proud of, not ashamed of. So, I guess something good came out of my experience with Cote, after all.

We bought an Apple IIE in 1983. I saved the receipt for some reason and still have it. We paid an astounding $2500 for that thing. This was the real beginning of the personal computer market and I really got into it from the beginning and had great visions of where this was going. I saw enormous changes in the home and the workplace. One of these visions really caused a stir at work.

We had these gigantic, dual-screen terminals to do our work on at FICPAC. They were dinosaurs even in the early 80s, but they were all we had to work on. Besides being slow and cumbersome to work with, there were only a few terminals in the work area, resulting in a log jam of people waiting to get their work done. This became even worse when some people viewed them as their personal property because they happened to be located within their shops and tried to limit the amount of time other people could work on them. I saw the personal computer as an answer to this problem and talked about this idea of getting a bunch of desktop computers and putting one in every workshop, maybe even every desk. I was like a floppy-eared puppy in my enthusiasm, so I was bit surprised to learn that I had been banned from the computer floor. They had declared me persona non grata and said I wasn’t to be allowed in the door. It turns out that they didn’t think so highly of my idea and viewed me as some kind of evil force. Unsuspectingly, I had created a firestorm of hate and discontent.

Five years later, when I returned as a reservist, every desk had a personal computer on it.

This is also how I invented the lap-top computer. Something a lot of people may not know is the Apple IIE was actually a portable computer. It even came with a carrying case. I opened it up one day and looked around inside to see how it worked and was surprised to see that it was about half empty space inside. It occurred to me that you could get rid of that empty space and you would have something compact and easy to carry. I told my wife about this idea and drew it all out on a piece of paper. I even compared it to a notebook and said you could toss it in your briefcase and take it with you. She asked me what it would run on and I said you could supply it with batteries for the times when a plug wasn’t handy. I had it all worked out. When we were done, I crumpled up the paper and threw it away. The notebook computer showed up a couple of years later and started a whole new way of life.

I refer to this as an example of how when a good idea’s time has come, more than one person will come up with it. The forces of the market demand a solution to a problem and the solution will manifest itself.

I’m an incurable bibliophile – I love books. This something that started when I was quite young and grew to epic proportions when I was in my teens. I love the smell of them, the feel of them, and the look of them. I even enjoy just thinking about them being in my library. The thought of all of that knowledge and thought being available is very comforting. When I’m reading, I’m not even aware of the words. A picture forms in my mind and I’m transported to that place. I remember reading about a battle and I was there in the fighting. When it was over and I put the book down my ears were ringing with the sound of the battle and I was stunned by how quiet it was in my room. Some of my best friends have been characters in books.

In years past I would buy pretty indiscriminately. I would buy a book I had no plans to read simply because it looked interesting. How knows? Some day I’ll find the time to get around to it. I still am a sucker for books, but I’m much more selective than I use to be. I buy hardcover books almost exclusively because they look and feel better and will last longer. And, I have actually gotten pretty good at buying only books I really intend to read. Actually getting around to reading them is still something I’m working on. Book stores, especially used book stores, are places I just love to haunt. When ever I hit a new town, one of the first things I do is to find out where the used book stores are. I’m seldom as comfortable as I am when I’m one. I will immerse myself in the treasures around me and the rest of the world will simply cease to exist.

One time I got the author to sign a copy of his book for me. This was just a lark because the idea of autographs is not something that had ever appealed to me. But, this actually ended being something I enjoyed. There was this connection in my mind between the work and the person that originated these words. I’ve since acquired quite a collection of signed books, many of which are by very notable authors.

With this love of books, it is natural that I also have a great love of libraries. Combine this with my love of knowledge and learning and libraries become like churches to me. They are places to revere the human spirit and all of our endeavors. I can go into a library and easily spend an entire day browsing through the stacks. Never have I been disappointed doing this. The things you can learn and experience in a library!

When I first moved to Hawaii I read a lot about the state and the region, just to get to know my new home. One book I greatly enjoyed was Michener’s book, Hawaii. He gave such a wonderful history of the land and the people that I spent a lot of time there tracing out the different events as he described him. This led me to a little country library on Maui during one of my visits to that island. I was browsing through the books on Hawaiian history and found one that described some events in Michener’s book with great detail. It made me wonder if Michener had maybe used that book. This was before things like libraries were computerized and this one still used check-out cards in the back cover of the books. I opened up the back and pulled out the check-out card and there was ‘James Michener’ penned in, dated many years earlier.

I took the book and card to the front desk and showed the librarian what I had found. Her eyes got wide and she thanked me profusely as she took it from me. Hopefully, it’s on display somewhere – a little library’s claim to fame.

I began to get a little flabby while in Hawaii and started working out during my lunch hour. Working out is one of those things where the more you do, the more you want to do. As you get in a groove and your body is getting into shape, you just want to run a little further or lift a little more weight. Before I knew it, I was running ten kilometers at lunchtime every day and wanting more.

A natural progression of this is shop talk, talking about working out with the people you see every day. Most of these conversations were of the time of day variety, but one of them caught my attention. This one guy I knew was talking about an upcoming triathlon. This, I decided, was too cool to pass up.

A triathlon is a race consisting of a swim, followed by a bike, and then a run. The granddaddy of all triathlons is the Ironman, which consists of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run. Each leg is the equivalent of a standard long-distance, endurance race in that particular discipline.

The triathlon I was hearing about was a half-Ironman, a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike ride, and a 13.1 mile run. What a test of your physical conditioning. I was 27-years old at the time and in great shape. I just couldn’t pass this up. I stepped up my training even more than I had. I added swimming laps and bike training to my regimen. I wasn’t just working out at lunchtime anymore. I was working out in the evenings after work and on weekends.  I probably tripled my training hours. This, I knew, was nowhere near enough to be competitive in the race. My goal was to complete it and I wasn’t sure I could. Ironman is an appropriate name and people routinely don’t finish the races, dropping out along the way when exhaustion and pain over take them. But, I was determined to finish.

The race, the Keauhou-Kona Triathlon, was held on the southern coast of the island of Hawaii. The course is actually the same course as for the Ironman, which just made it even more attractive. The race began before dawn with the swim. I am a very strong swimmer and did well. The ocean was like people stew, there were so many swimmers. At one point, I was squished in between several large groups of people that were converging on the point that I happened to be occupying. I tried to outmaneuver them, but found myself hemmed in on all sides. Realizing I was about to be pushed under, I went over the top of the whole mass. There were five or six people between me and open water on all sides, so this wasn’t easy. It was easy to see how someone could be drowned.

I not only made it out without mishap, I was near the front of the pack. I had a very good time. But, my weakest event was next, the bike. I had trained hard, but the kind of muscles you need take years to develop and I had only been training for weeks. Quickly, I found myself falling behind as more and more people passed me. Then, it started to get bad.

The southern shore of Hawaii is a desert. Everyone thinks of the Hawaii islands as lush, tropical rainforests, but that is only on the northeastern shore, the windward side. The trade winds blow from that direction and dump all of their rain when they run into the mountains. Once the wind goes over the mountains and down the other side they are dry and there is very little rain on the leeward side of the islands. The triathlon was on the leeward side.

What this meant is that once you got out of the populated area and into the country, you also got out of the vegetation. The landscape in this area is a magnificent moonscape, and just about as harsh. There is probably not enough vegetation on the entire leeward side of the island to cover even a single acre of land. The first implication of this is obvious, it got hot very quickly. But, as the rocks heated up, the hot air over them rose up, to be replaced by cool air coming in from the ocean. This creates a wind and as the day gets hotter, the wind gets stronger. I now understood why the race started so early, so that people could get done with the bike portion before the winds reached hurricane force. Most of the racers were fast enough that they got out into the desert area and were on their way back before things got bad. But, I was too slow. The wind got stronger and stronger and was blowing straight into my face. I was getting weaker and thoughts of quitting were starting to play in my mind, and then I realized I was going down a hill and pedaling as hard as I could just to make any headway. The wind was so strong that it was blowing me up the hill. I was about to decide that I was beaten when I looked ahead and there was the turn-around point, only a few hundred yards in front of me. Mustering all of my remaining strength, I fought the rest of the way to the turn around and then had the wind at my back. I was again struck by the good planning on the part of the race committee to have the wind coming from behind on the return leg. The very thing that almost caused me to quit was now helping me to finish.

I successfully completed the bike portion and began the run, my strongest leg. I was drained from the bike and it took all of my remaining strength to finish, but like I said, I was determined. Finally, after more than eight hours of swimming, biking, and running, I crossed the finish line. My body ached, I was exhausted, my knees felt like they had a couple of hot fireplace pokers through them, and the rest of my joints were on fire. But it was worth it. I was a triathlete!

I reenlisted in the summer of 1981, which would eventually put me in Pearl Harbor, HI. But, the trip to Hawaii was neither straight, nor short. I would need to do about nine months of training enroute at four different schools along the way. This was a trip that would take me on several new adventures and allow me to see and experience parts of the country I never had before. First stop was Denver, CO where I attended IS “A” school, to learn the ways of being an intelligence specialist, for three and half months.

Denver had a number of great attractions for me, as a soon to be 24-year old male. I was there from July through the middle of October, so it was too early for skiing. But there were many other attractions. The museums, the dining, the Rocky Mountains, the women. Ah, yes. The women. You see, Denver was a great dating town. There was a shortage of eligible males and this had interesting consequences. Not that you couldn’t date in Norfolk, but the dating there was pretty tough. There was a stigma about girls that dated sailors. Kind of like, ‘Nice girls don’t date sailors.’ I remember this time I dated a black girl. She was outrageously beautiful; in fact she is still one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever dated. But, the problem wasn’t that I was white, something that never came up. The problem was that I was a sailor and she made some passing reference to that fact several times during the date. It was pretty obvious that she was slumming and thought it was a thrill. I was an adventure date for her.

But, that was all different in Denver. Since it wasn’t a military town, there was no negative connotation to being in the military. What they saw was an eligible male. Women would come buy you drinks in the bar. I actually had two women get in a fist fight over me one night. I was dating four women at one time for a while. It was interesting, but not something I would want to do again. I learned that I am definitely a one-woman kind of guy. But, at least I got it out of my system.

But, then I made a mistake that all men make eventually, I fell in love. I don’t mean the gentle, puppy-love kind of infatuation. I mean the kind of stuff that makes your body burn and leaves you lying awake in the middle of the night. The kind of stuff that will make you change your ways and your outlook on life. I was head over heals and incurable.

It took all of my courage to ask this girl out. Terrorist have nothing compared to women when it comes to affecting the courage of men. I was terrified! If I was rejected that would be the end of it. Not even trying seems like a better alternative. Lions and tigers and bears would be preferable. We had socialized, which is how I had gotten to know her, but never a date between just the two of us. You can imagine my pleasure when she accepted. We went out a few times and were getting to know each other when I noticed something strange. She wanted me to beat her.

I was too young at the time to understand this, but I now understand that she had some serious problems. It started out as rough, little joking comments. If we didn’t immediately agree with each other on something, she would say something like, ‘Oh oh, maybe you need to slap me!’ But, the comments got more explicit to the point she was practically asking me to beat her. It was part of love to her. And when I wouldn’t do it, she found someone else that would.

I was devastated by the experience and carried a torch for a long time. It was a painful, difficult lesson in life. I had never hit a woman in my life, and I still haven’t. So, do I win the woman I love by doing something I find repulsive? Or, do I remained true to my values and not sell them, not even for love? What would have been the consequences if I had just slapped her a few times? Would she have stayed with me? Maybe, if she had stayed with me I could’ve gotten her help. Instead, she pursued a relationship that continued this abuse.

But, I wasn’t the only one that made a decision here. This girl knew I was there and that I wanted a serious relationship with her, but she valued her life style more than me. I believe you must, above all else, remain true to yourself, to the things you believe in, and to the things you stand for. If you compromise those things you end up compromising yourself and you start on the road to becoming an empty shell of a human being, standing for nothing and valuing nothing.

I’m satisfied with the choice I made.