Freedom Run

The alert was quiet again today, thankfully. While we are on alert, we have special rules about working out. If the whole crew were to go the gym at the same time, it would be interesting, not to say very smelly, for us all to rush from the gym to the aircraft to get airborne. So, the policy is that only one person from the crew is allowed to workout at a time. And while we're working out, you have to have a flight suit staged in the ready room so that you can quickly get dressed and get to the bird. To be honest, I've never worked out while on alert. I don't like the idea of getting caught off guard. Usually our alerts are only 12 hours for each crew, so it's not too hard to workout before or after the alert.

This afternoon I was down in my room preparing my notes to lead the Bible study next Tuesday. Flight ops wrapped up and they made an announcement that the flight deck was open for jogging. This doesn't happen all that often, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity. What a day for it. Scattered to broken cloud layer, but otherwise blue sky, gently rolling deep blue water, a stiff breeze blowing down the deck. As I made my way up to the flight deck, I powered up one of my Christmas presents, a wristwatch Garmin workout gadget that tracks position (using GPS), pace, heartrate (and time, obviously). It took a while for it to realize we weren't in Kansas any more and acquire the satellite constellation. Sure enough, though, after about 2 minutes… there we were in the middle of the Pacific.

So off I went towards the bow, wind in my face. I had to dodge around E-2 propeller arcs (you never go through them, even when they're static!!), and many parked jets as I wound my way up towards the bow. As I made a tight left turn around the nose of a Hornet that faced into the wind, I enjoyed the relief of a tail wind all the way back to the stern. The gentle rock of the ship provided a feel of occassional up or down hill at times, or the heave and drop would just add to the challenge of balancing. Working back toward the waist (the part of the ship where the landing area juts out on the port side) there was a Viking with turning engines doing some troubleshooting. The noise was loud, but exciting. I ducked around another Hornet that was having a missile loaded onto the wingtip and then around my very own alert helicopter spotted and chained out on Spot 4 (about midway down the LA on the port side).

Back down towards the round down, there were two more Vikings parked on the fantail, so I had to cut it a little short, making my "base leg" turn. Then it was back into the wind from the fantail up to the bow. On elevator 4, just behind the island on the starboard side, the red shirts (ordnancemen) were wrapping up a 9mm small arms qualification shoot. They set up a clothesline between two volleyball net poles, with targets hanging from the line. At about 15m distance, they were shooting at targets for their annual qualification. I kept my distance behind the firing line, jumping over the arresting wires at the same time. As I approached the inboard side of the island, where the other "ready" helo's are kept (the "helo hole"), I finished my first lap and kept on moving with a smile on my face.

Each lap took about 3 1/2 minutes. I got about 6 laps done in 20 minutes, which I figure should total about 2 1/4 miles. Of course the GPS thinks I went about 17 miles, running at a 1:50 min/mile pace! What should have looked like long ovals (had I been running on a stationary track) simply looks like a squiggly line on the map. If only I really did burn the 1100 calories it says I burned (especially since Saturday is pizza night!). It was nice to enjoy the outdoors at least for a bit today.

My connectivity may be sketchy tomorrow, so no guarantees on whether I'll be able to post. I'll do my best.