I don't know if I told this one before but today one of the more humorous things that happened to me back in my Navy days came back to me.  The air conditioning in my classroom was not working so well today and the classroom was a little stuffy so during one of the breaks I went outside to get some air and saw one of the LPD's leaving port.  It brought back memories of something that happened back in 1990 just before we left for Operation Desert Shield.

It was October of 1990 and we had received orders to deploy early in December, so they moved all of our inspections up to the month of October so we would be ready to deploy in December instead of our regular deployment that was to start in May.  We had several underway hoops to jump through at the time such as our Propulsion Readiness Exam, Refresher Training and Amphibious Refresher Training.  We were going out to sea every Monday and returning every Friday, if we returned that week at all.

One Monday was overcast pretty much like it is here today.  Also being late in the year and the fact that we were getting underway early in the morning had me driving to work with my headlights on. 

I got to the ship, made sure the underway check off list was completed and then went and manned my sea and anchor detail station on the bridge of the ship.  As we were getting underway I happened to glance over at the parking lot and low and behold there was a car parked there with the lights turned on.  What was worse was, that it was my car. 

I remember calling the wife when we pulled in that Friday asking her to bring the jumper cables and her car.  She always hated coming to the base, especially since she never knew when I would be able to leave the ship.

I think that was the last time I ever left my lights on, and of course with today's cars you get an audible alarm if you try and get out and you left them on.  I sure wish they had had those alarms back then.