Ok well I finally went out on an aircraft carrier. We were out for about 30 days and man what an experience. It was a lot of fun but a little difficult at times. All the ship really did was trot around about 60 to 90 miles off the coast. I did get to see some of the coast of Mexico when we were heading back in which was cool I guess. Other than that you really have to learn how to walk funny and don't cut yourself shaving in the shower. That was kind of hard at times. My office is all the way forward so we feel everything and we are right below the flight deck and one of the four cataputs so whenever they launched a plane we knew because we had to hold on to the computers so they didn't rattle off our desk (and it is extremely loud). It is very cold on the ship even though it was may. I did get to see a whale one day and one of the submarine's that came out with us was at periscope depth and you could see that sticking out of the water. I went up to a place on the ship called Volture's Row which was awesome. From there you can see almost all the flight deck and it amazing to stand up there at night and watch an F18 launch and trap or miss the trap and shoot sparks all the way down the deck from the tail hook. I wish I could have gotten some picture's of that but you can't use a flash at night. I hope on my next trip I can get some during the day or maybe a video at night. These pictures are from in port in San Diego when we were waiting to leave.
