Sorry, I have been Deployed on important missions.
I have spent the last month on the move mostly. A lot of it was Secret so I can only talk about it on this Interwebnet thingy.
The Soviet is now a Certified Open Water Diver. I promised to do it all with her and I have to admit that it was not as easy as it was 30 years ago. We then went and did 8 dives all around Florida while the rest of you got cold. Sorry I have not been posting for a while and a giant THANK YOU to those who carried the load while I was suffering through long days and nights in 85 degree water.
Best Regards to all.
Category: Do You Miss Me Yet?
Glad you are back brother.
Lucky bastard.
Can I be Dave Hardin when I grow up? I’ll even smile occasionally.
I smiled once…didn’t much care for it. It gives strangers the impression I give a shit. Then they try to talk to me and act all warm and fuzzy.
Creeps me out.
A smile is like saying please, it’s a sign of weakness. Besides that, if you smile and say please people will think they are your friend and want to borrow money.
No DD-214 needed, Dave’s claims of being a Marine check out.
Would you smile if all these jerks kept hitting on your Soviet.
Dave’s glower is what keeps them from pestering her to death. Their death.
I always made a point of smiling when giving bad news to officers, particularly Lieutenants. Made them nervous.
So… she “waterboarded” you, Dave?
Key West Distillery is awesome. $10 gets you a shot of each and a pretty nifty whiskey glass.
That was a great place for temp orders there at NAS Key West. I enjoyed it.
I was drinking my breakfast in Captain Tony’s in 2002, 1SG calls me with the news I’d made the SFC List. So I had a bigger breakfast. There still might be an 11th SIG BDE patch stapled to the wall.
You were a Thunderbird?
15 of my 24 years of regular Army service!
I’d venture to say that water and adult beverages wasn’t the only “diving” you were doing. Poor, poor, pitiful you. The sacrifices you have to make.
Thanks Bro, the struggle is real.
(say the following in a monotome voice)
Oh Dave, you poor soul! Having to go to Florida with the lovely Soviet and have endure the weather, scuba diving, whiskey tasting and sun. You poor soul, how ever did you survive!
(Shut off monotone voice)
Glad you had fun, your wife is lovely.
Nice you could take your daughter on vacation.
The Soviet gets upset when people say that … my daughter is much older than she is.
I double down on my first comment: lucky bastard.
Oh dayummmmm …. you actually made me laugh aloud.
I to have a younger wife so be advised Little Rock AFB pharmacy now dispenses Cialis which means other military pharmacy’s probably as well. Forget about the macho, as we age they do not.
Braggart.
When they say “granddaughter” ya might wanna hang it up…
Prolly goes a bit like this…
My Father the Hero https://g.co/kgs/zycguh
Hard to believe the little girl was Katherine Heigl.
The diving was about the only thing I really miss about Guam.
Time was guys would pass down/sell their “Guam bomb” cars, and once in a great while someone would sell a zodiac.
Beats the hell out of shore diving or swimming out to your dive point.
Snorkeled a lot on Guam, never was a diver. We had two Guam Bombs. Could actually watch the road through the rusted out holes inside the damn cars. We put tint on the windows of one, thinking it would make the car cooler to drive. AC didn’t work, so it was 90 degrees with or without the tinting. Gave one away and sold one for, I think, $50 when we left to a newly arriving couple. The cars actually started and ran well and other than being 50% bondo, they were more than adequate transportation. Three years on Guam, 81-84, Navy Hospital. Yes, we would go back. Lived on East Sunset Drive, overlooking the ocean. Entire three years there, our AC was off maybe 8 hours, and that was b/c it broke. Public works had it up and running within a few hours. Walls would sweat if AC was off more than an hour or so. Aaah, the memories of Guam. Moonlighted at Guam Memorial Hospital. My civilian orthopedist here told me last month that the hospital was close to being closed down b/c they couldn’t pay their utilities or pay their employees. The hospital couldn’t function w/o the moonlighting Navy medical personnel.
I’ve said it before, Dave, and I’ll say it again … you are one LUCKY man!
And the Soviet is one very fortunate woman to have you, sir.
And to think, I made all that gravy in vain.
Oh please, I go on deployment and when I get back I always hear about you ladling your gravy to strangers.
I prayed you would not hurt anyone.
Roast sirloin tip beef medium rare, roasted potatoes and onions, green beans almondine on the side and apple pie w/ice cream.
You had me at medium rare …
Yes, but what wine did you serve? You may have picked up from earlier posts, wine is one of my fortes. I recently learned California vintners who primarily produce Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Grigio wines have developed a new hybrid grape that acts as an anti-diuretic. It is expected to reduce the number of trips older people have to make to the bathroom during the night. The new wine will be marketed as
PINO MORE
I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE!!
Sorry, it was too good to let pass!
Cual vino? O, algo simple, por supuesto. Vino Fuerte.
You done good, Dave. That’s a shared experience you’ll remember for the rest of your lives. My lovely West Texas girl and I did it back in the mid 70’s while we were living in Pensacola. Instead of taking lessons there though, we did like you guys and went down to the much clearer water of the Keys where we’d contracted with a diving instructor in Marathon for private lessons. He and his wife were a wild and crazy pair from Ohio who made the whole experience very entertaining.
Unfortunately, after making a few subsequent diving trips to different Caribbean islands, I had to give it up because of inner ear problems that caused intense pressure pain on flights home afterwards. It was only snorkeling thereafter. But there’s nothing like being underwater, swimming with the fish on a tropical reef, especially with a beautiful woman in a bikini gliding along by your side. That’s truly living.
Ahhh…memories.
Outstanding, it was a great time. The Reefs have taken a hammering over the years. What used to be tubes of coral on the reef are now on the bottom covered by sand. But, there seems to be many more species in the reefs these days.
PATI has gone full boy-scout with a patch for everything now days… at a price of course. The latest “required” equipment seems to be more about fashion and less about actual safety.
I remember when a BCD was called a rock. Now they have more shit hanging off them while diving than you can imagine. Even I have a dive computer…makes ya lazy.
Nitrox is all the craze these days. People have crazy ideas about what it does. Add a little O2 to people and they become super human. To get Trimix now you have to have DNA of file and a bunch of patches.
Many things are new and better though. Dives wrecks like the USS HOYT VANDENBERG are everywhere these days. Balanced first stages breath as easy at 90 feet as they do at 10. I even found bifocal inserts for my mask. Almost nobody uses a weight belt now, they stuff environmentally conscience weights into their vests with quick release handles. Supposed to be safe or more better or some such shit.
There are plenty of crazy couples still hanging about. We always seem to find a few. I used to think people were attracted to my suave and debonaire ways…I am beginning to believe it has something to do with the Soviet.
S/F Brother life is too short for cheap beer and ugly women.
What’s with the evil eye?
My dog used to look at me like that.
Because he talked to the other dogs in the neighborhood and found out your “peanut butter game” isn’t normal.
I thought that was a cat thing.
A dog would rip it off and run away with it.
Dave, in this image it looks like the Soviet’s beer is bigger than yours.
Are you cutting back or something?? (Gasp!) 😉
No, its my HUGE hands that makes the glass look small.
It’s not small, it was cold…don’t ya know about shrinkage?
Dave, I am sure now, that you can see why I loved living in the Lower Keys. I roamed from Marathon to the East, to the Sugarloaf to the West, from my base on No Name Key. I loved being on, or in, the water. That location allowed me to make 2 day trips to fish/dive Bimini, Cay Sal, Cuba, or way out back in Florida Bay. If it weren’t so damned expensive I would still be living there. I am glad that y’all got the chance to enjoy the place.
Frankie Cee, we haven’t been back to the Keys since we left Pensacola thirty years ago. From what I can see on this computer, it looks like all the development and increased tourism has taken away much of the charm, especially in Key West itself. When we first went down in the mid 70’s, the only major hotel chain was Holiday Inn; most motels and restaurants were family owned and named after their owners, like Bud and Irene’s or Moe and Mary’s. It was so charming and distinctively different from any other part of the country that it was easy to believe you were on foreign soil.
Sad to see it change to just another Florida tourist destination.
They still have most of the hotels as mom and pop type operations. Lots of local restaurants still around. I assume the Chamber of Comm and local government does what they can to keep it that way.
It has grown some…but it still has that same kinda charm.
The only thing that there seems to have had an explosion in the population are the Chickens.
Now its a $500 fine to mess with one. They are everywhere now.
When I dove, I came to know two truths that stayed with me:
* Depth doesn’t make the diver
* Talk is cheap on the surface
There is nothing like doing a body recovery in turbid water where you “see” the body by feeling the hair on their head.
No, no … I am not talking about Dumpsters. I am sure you have all kinds of interesting stories about that.
Love ya peaches.
😉
If you ever go to Waffle House with Little Daisy Cutter you will understand her fixation for dumpsters.
She is attracted to seedy people in low places.
Finally, the rest of the story. 🙂
I’ve been to Waffle House and Slash Run with this crowd.
I didn’t understand the theme of Slash Run until I went to look through their jukebox. It had 99.9% of the album covers of people with blood on them, I think from self-mutilation. Then, there was ONE out-of-place album by Merle Haggard. I bet Jonn had something to do with that.
I understood the theme of Waffle House right away. While I was fixated on the dead flies at the edge of the table, Hardin explained to me that grape jelly equals hash browns with onions. Apparently, this is how they keep track of orders – filling up a plate with substitute condiments then replace it with the real thing when ready.
I can truly say I have friends in low, low places.
I wanna be like Dave if I ever grow up!
\m/
Did you ride the shark?
Have you ever thought about getting a railroad engineer license and running your own train? Ah well, it’s probably cheaper to dive 🙂
Who is the Grinch with the beautiful lady?
Did that nurse shark follow you home?
You have passed the species identification portion for Advanced Open Water Diver.
The Soviet did finally reach out and pet one. She said it didn’t feel anything like she had expected.
We also found lots of other stuff.
Nice shots!!!
Coming to a theater near you soon:
“Dave and the Soviet’s Excellent Adventure”
Welcome back, Dave…Thank you for sharing the pictures and story about your “deployment” with your beautiful Bride…
🤗
Thanks, I hope all is well with you and yours. I imagine to some people these kinds of posts are much like going to a friends house and they break out the “vacations” photo album.
Be well.