Month: April 2025

We are now only 10 days out from our 4-day trip to Hawaii and Sis, Kate, and I are all really excited about the trip. One of the exciting things is that there is an ABC Store just across the highway in the Ko Olina Resort.

For those new to Hawaii, the ABC Stores are a touristy market of just about anything you need in Hawaii – take-out food, clothing and beach wear, sunglasses, macadamia nuts, and on and on. Since the Disney resort provided cooking facilities, we can stock up here for breakfast and snack items.

We fly out a week from Wednesday on April 9th-12th. Also, in late breaking news, Kate got an offer to upgrade to first class and had me check on my flight. I too had an offer too good to resist: $380. for me, but $760. for Sis. So, we all upgraded and are flying from Denver to Honolulu in comfort.

Planning for Disney Points later this year we are looking at taking a trip with Kate, Jen, Patrick, and Charlotte in early December that would be a 4-day Disney Cruise out of Port Canaveral. Patrick and Jen’s anniversary is on December 3rd, and Charlotte (who graduates HS this June) may be spreading her wings soon. We are still noodling about that trip; we probably can’t book until August when my annual points vest.

While thinking about that trip, I got on offer from Viking Cruises about a sale they were having through the end of the month: discounts on tickets, free airfare (from select airports, not Denver), and free drink package. I poked around on their site and decided to go big or go home. There was a two-week river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam. (You can see the trip HERE.) Of course, cruises are double occupancy, so I contacted Kate to see if she were interested. She had interviewed Poppi in high school about his experiences in WWII and we would be going by some of the highlights (Cologne and Nuremberg). I decided that I wasn’t getting any younger and jumped at it. It’s expensive, but all inclusive: air fare (from Casper to Budapest), all transfers, meals, drink package, etc., etc. Total price was just under $14K for both of us. I also got us 2 extra days in Amsterdam.

For the rest of this entry, I’m going to go into and talk about Lindsay and my recollections of Amsterdam; feel free to skip to the end.

In December of 1980 I was about half-way through a patrol on USS Sam Rayburn (SSBN-635) when we were notified that we would get a port call in Rotterdam, Netherlands over Christmas. This was back in pre-iPhone days. If I had a phone it was left at home and looked something like this:

The Submarine Group also let the wives know, so some planning was done in the background, and we got family-grams (45-word one way text messages (censored by the navy as needed) that a few of the wives were flying over to meet us. I think the Engineer’s and me (Ass’t Weapons Officer) were the only officer’s wives to fly over. (Lindsay had gotten a passport to go to REFORGER exercise in Germany a couple of years before.) Note that this was expensive and short notice, so I was very lucky she could make it.

While noodling down through the North Sea, the CO asked me (since I was Diving Officer as a collateral duty) so exactly how much will our draft increase when we go into fresh water? “Uhmmm, I’ll get back to you sir, with the calculations”, I said. I was a smart enough junior officer to recognize a leading question, and the follow-on questions that would wind up leading to the exact calculations I was going to do, so I cut to the chase. I knew intuitively that it couldn’t be much, since my previous ship, the USS Tang (SS-563) had been moored at the Subase New London, up the Thames River and taking her out to sea and back hadn’t made any noticeable change in draft.

I spent about an hour going over the density of fresh versus salt water: we had a standard value we used to calculate trim about 8.56 lbs, Fresh water was about 8.3 lbs. Typical draft in seawater was 32 feet so in freshwater draft would be about 33 feet. I showed the Captain my calculations and he was satisfied.

We pulled in and I met my wife on the pier. She explained that the Engineer’s wife and her had split a rental car and had us a hotel room in Amsterdam about 75 klicks up the road. We checked out with the CO, and we were off until the muster for underway.

I’m not sure where we stayed for instance here is the current view of downtown Amsterdam:

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And here is the same view with hotels overlaid”

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Notice all the blue lines, they are the canals of Amsterdam. The red pin in the center is the location of the Nieuwe Kerk (The New Church). In 1980 it was newly refurbished, and it hosted a Catholic Midnight Mass. We attended, the Dutch vernacular was close enough to follow along. As we were coming out, I noticed a cornerstone with the date: 1409. Hmmm, that means that the “New Church” was built 211 years before the pilgrims landed in 1620. It gives you a sense of the scope of history of Europe. By the way, in case you were wondering, the Oude Kerk (Old Church) is about a thousand feet to the east, still standing, was built in 1213 and consecrated in 1306, but was crowded so they needed a new one.

Another place we visited was the Anne Frank house. She was the author of the Anne Frank Diary. It was incredibly sobering to see. If any of the young’uns haven’t read it, I recommend it.

Another interesting fact I picked up was the proper pronunciation of the cheese Gouda. I used the traditional English pronunciation of goo-da. Two of the crew in a rental car noted the town of Gouda was just North of Rotterdam and decided to visit it. Of course, they got lost and were asking some Dutch folk (with so-so English skills, but way better than the sailor’s Dutch). They were at an impasse until they pulled out the map and pointed to the town. The light came on, and the helpful Dutch said, “Oh, you mean (How-da). You go down this road for a couple of km and turn left. Our Supply Officer also scored big. He wound up purchasing a bunch of small cheeses (mostly flavored Gouda), that we served as appetizers and movie snacks for the rest of the patrol.

One of the decisions that Lindsay talked to me about some more while in Amsterdam, was having children. She felt her biological clock ticking (she was 28 at the time). We had been up to Yale New Haven the year before and had gotten a brand-new test called a MRI. So new in fact the name used was Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging or NMRI. It turned out that the “Nuclear” freaked people out, so they dropped it. That had given Lindsay a positive diagnosis of MS and she already had significant scarring in her brain. They also offered us genetic counseling in that they suspected that there were some genetic factors even though there wasn’t any clear dependence. They advised NOT having children.

When we married, we had planned to have a couple of kids. I couldn’t imagine being an only child. (Sorry, Charlotte, I didn’t get a vote in your parent’s decision). We decided after talking it over that we get no promises, and Lindsay was still mobile (as we hiked all over Amsterdam). She could be perfectly healthy, have children, and still get hit by a bus.

Getting back to Amsterdam, and Lindsay’s loudly ticking biologic clock. She decided to go off the pill and be ready to try at the end of the patrol. It turns out that at the time, there was a three-week window if you wanted your husband home for both the impregnation and delivery of a child. That patrol ended in mid-February of 1981. Kate was borne on November 12th of that year. So yes, I am interested in revisiting Amsterdam.