Hey guys, hoping to break up the monotony of the off-season. I'm Brian.
- Graduated 2014
- grew up in Virginia Beach - navy brat
- changed major after freshman year into Communication - Multimedia Journalism. Absolutely loved it and worked in the field for a year at an ABC affiliate in Hampton Roads, but could tell (even back then) the news/journalism was not going to be as thrilling or rewarding as I'd hoped, or provide promotion ability or financial security without really lucky breaks.
- once interviewed Andy Bitter as a dumb college kid. He was awesome! I feel bad that I made him drive from Roanoke to Blacksburg in retrospect.
- found my way and applied all year to the Coast Guard. Commissioned in 2015 as an officer thanks to Corps of Cadets time.
- have lived in Seattle, DC, Newport RI and Maine.
- have been to the North Pole, broken ice on the Hudson and Maine rivers, chased buoys all over New England, and did a counter-drug patrol in the Pacific off of Mexico/Costa Rica/Panama.
- outside of VT, enjoy F1, Premier League, NHL and follow the Tour de France in the summer. I'll watch playoff NFL, MLB, NBA but have no rooting interests.
- hobbies are hard with kids (2 under 4). I try to read a book every month for fun, not work/school related.
- I would not have the success in my career or at home without the support of my wife! Hoping to restore some work life balance after so many afloat experiences.
I'm sure I've overlooked other easy details to discuss. If you have questions on that or the Coast Guard, fire away!
Comments
Some one tell Andy he has a chance to interview VBVTUSCG and reverse the script!
On the small chance he sees it, I'm sorry I made you drive from Roanoke to Blacksburg in the spring for a maybe 30-45 minute interview! The grace and patience he showed an aspiring journalism student at the time was a lasting memory for me.
How many near collisions have you had on the boats?
Favorite campus building? Least favorite campus building?
Favorite campus food, and most underrated campus food?
More than I'd like, lobstermen in Maine rarely comply with the safe speed rule and slow down in restricted visibility, and like to do 15-20 kts in dense fog. Same with ferries. Both have their perceived route or job to do which forces you to stay on your toes, like defensive driving near DC.
Favorite campus building? Rasche/Brodie Halls for the nostalgia, same with Schultz. Still present may be Moss Arts Center as they had just started the Communication curriculum there.
Least favorite, McBryde by far.
Hokie Grill and Owens are far, far underrated imo on campus. Give me that over Turner or West End anyday.
PKs and Champs fall into the underrated downtown food/drink category as well
You have to put together a Case Race team of people alive or dead. Who's on your team?
1. Freshman year Corps roommate. He rocks, introduced me to my wife, taught me how to be a less high strung freshman, and is an all around dude.
2. Give me a historical figure like Teddy Roosevelt or George Washington to throw down with the boys.
3. Fictional character I guess? Ron Swanson or Jeff Bridges from The Big Lebowski for the vibes.
We might not win but we'll have fun and at least we showed up lol
What's the most harrowing experience you've had on a boat for each of the following due to:
Weather
Interaction with another party
Mechanical issues
Another person on your boat/within the coast guard
I got snubbed!
No I'm working on a reply! Trying to be nuanced but succinct
I'll take these one at a time to organize my thoughts.
Weather: we blew one of our two steering pumps well above 80° north latitude in some really thick ice, and it took 36 hours to fix, otherwise we would have been in a pickle.
Otherwise transiting back from the Arctic to Dutch Harbor racing a powerful Alaskan low pressure system, seeing 20-30ft rollers.
Also crossing the Columbia River bar departing Astoria, OR was quite the experience. Again in bad weather, big rollers breaking then going beam to the seas, 0/10 would recommend.
Also saw 80 knot winds between the mountains entering Juneau, snapped a ton of antennas onboard.
Edit one more: finished up science research in the Arctic, cleared the aft working deck of personnel and began a turn. Rogue wave send a giant mass of green water across the working deck. Thankfully everyone was inside but flooded out the vestibule between the interior and exterior work spaces. Definitely a reminder of the force of nature.
Nice ones.
Did the same thing at the Columbia River on a Frigate after a good will visit while heading to Seattle Sea Fair.
One thing sailors know inherently that lubbers think they know is the power of nature.
Interaction with another party:
Thankfully nothing serious. Apprehended a few drug smugglers with cocaine onboard near Mexico or Costa Rica, I forget.
Saved 3 Mexican fisherman who's boat had overturned like 20 miles from shore, and had all but sunk. That was rewarding.
Otherwise thankfully nothing crazy.
Yup, saving other watermen is so satisfying and affirmation of your own choice in life.
Mechanical issues:
Aforementioned rudder pump. Lost steering of the coast of Mexico due to drifting fishing nets, thankfully restored quickly.
Pipe burst while working a buoy with a 20k lb concrete sinker in the air in fog near an island, so had to get that on deck and then quickly pivot to damage control.
Had to do a medevac of a crew member off the northern coast of alaska via MH60 helicopter near the ice. They flew out, dropped the basket, conducted a hoist, and got them out safe. Thankfully precautionary in the end.
I figured you'd circle back......just busting your chops buddy! I've been watching 'Deadliest Catch' since the beginning, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for what you and the rest of the USCG does every day!
Them helicopter crews are the best anywhere.
I just finished reading Torpedo Junction.
Have you had to deal with any of the remaining hazards from all the sinkings?
Unfortunately I haven't been able to do much work in the Outer Banks or Carolinas, save for working a ton of buoys after a hurricane in 2019 to re-open the Cape Fear River.
This is going on my reading list so thank you for the recommendation. There were also a ton of U boats and ordnance near Rhode Island and Cape Cod too believe it or not!
Fun Fact: The author of the book is the same Homer Hickam who designed Skipper
I was just trying to sus that out.
There is a sunken sub off the RI shore that people still try to dive to and get in trouble every year.
What is your recipe for boat drinks?
I'll take this one a different way, as no more grog rations or rarely underway beer days exist.
I will not get the ship underway without coffee, and good coffee at that. Maxwell house, folgers, etc do not count. I will wait at the pier for better stuff as long as it takes
Ginger ale, seltzer water, and tea in the winter are musts. The new generation is full on energy drinks and not coffee, so a changing of the guard may occur in the next decade lol.
Ashore, give me a nice bourbon and I'm set
How much do you love the C5I Service Center?
Oh snap, an insider threat!?!
Honestly no hard feelings, I feel recent contract and workflow changes handcuff them a fair amount. Like anything else there are superstars that bend over backwards to help, and those who don't. I have a few cards I can play to expedite underway troubleshooting issues, but they usually do a decent enough job I don't have to escalate
Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?
Where in the world should Carmen San Diego be?
Where in the world would you want to go with Carmen San Diego?
Where in the world would you want to go without Carmen San Diego?
She owns multiple houses, and may be in Carmen Mexico or San Diego CA, but is like Schrodinger's cat. So neither or both.
Somewhere cold like Nome, AK - shutout Frosty'sDad
Eh idk. Pass
San Diego lol
Frosty's Dad approves this post.
"have been to the North Pole"
That is impressive. The furthest I've gotten to was Prudhoe Bay and walking out on top of the frozen Arctic Ocean/Beaufort Sea. How did you end up there?
Coast Guard polar icebreaker! Very capable asset and I was fortune it was on the cards one summer.
I've been ashore to Nome via small boat and saw the iditarod finish line! Big fan of Dutch Harbor and Seward. Also stopped in Juneau and Victoria Canada.
Prudhoe Bay and the ice sounds awesome. Ice liberty, or waking far out like that, is such a cool feeling. What took you there?
Alaska was the first family vacation my wife and I took after being married. That is, not our honeymoon, but first post-honeymoon vacation. I had wanted to get up to the Arctic Circle to get a picture at the sigh for the Arctic Circle on the Dalton Highway. We have it saved somewhere, although the picture someone got on that trip up to Prudhoe Bay where I was stepping from 1 tectonic plate onto another was even better. You clearly see the furrow in the ground.
Went for 3 days on a land (drive up) and air (fly back) tour with Northern Alaska Tour Company to do that part. Neither of us are really "tour group people" but it was going to be a hassle to get up the Dalton and then permission to go through the oil fields to get to the coast and I said, heck, just pay someone else to do all this. The trip was a blast.
https://www.northernalaska.com/
What and why are:
Your favorite holiday?
Your favorite flower?
Your least favorite takeout food?
Your guilty pleasure?
Holiday: christmas. My oldest showed unbridled joy and enthusiasm this year and made me remember the joy of the holidays.
Flower: maybe daffodils. Very prevalent in Newport and mean spring is near!
Least favorite: poorly done Thai or Asian. When it's done right it's stellar, but can never find one that meets the mail for me.
Guilty pleasure: uh either rooting for teams that will continuously break my heart (hello VT, Spurs, Caps) or recently buying toys for the kids that benefit me too haha
What's the most almost arrested you've ever been?
Pleading the 5th for security clearance reasons lol
Nice one
I DID have one I forgot about in my AMA last yea though technically it was not actually almost ARRESTED since police never got involved but was a late night (after bar-closing) accidental near grand theft auto so COULD'VE been arrested., LOL.
just tagged the end of your AMA w/ a Q. Interested in your thoughts
How many orphan dugongs have you adopted?
None. Saw plenty of polar bears and walrus but no dugongs or narwhals unfortunately
Waffles or pancakes?
I think waffles have a higher floor, pancakes have a higher ceiling.
Give me waffles
What's your favorite memory\moment as a sports fan? Hokies or otherwise
Would say
2013?edit: 2011 Miami homecoming game, after the Logan Thomas 4th and 1 from the 19, where the stadium was going wild before and after the hurricanes last play.That or the David Wilson kickoff return for TD against GT. Being able to be on the field for so many enter sandman jumps as a cadet was awesome too!
On the flipside, boise st and jmu were a tough two weeks as a freshman cadet.
Tips for avoiding motion sickness?
Take your dramamine 24 hours out if needed. Stay in a place where you can see the horizon. Or in a lower, centerline compartment. Fresh air helps.
Sometime you can puke and rally too lol
Great advice, especially on the 24 hour thing. I started getting motion sickness about 5 years ago out of nowhere. Only puked once, but car rides, boat rides, turbulence... none of it sits well all of a sudden
Yeah in that case it might just be a find what works best for you. Dramamine frequently needs 12-24 hours to take effect. I've seen pills work better over patches, but that also likely varies per person.
Best of luck, motion/sea sickness are no fun at all
This is news to me! Good to know. So if I'm traveling at 8am tomorrow, I'll take one at 8am today, is there any point to taking a second one tomorrow morning or nah?
I've always done a dose at night then another the morning of. Sometimes, depending on weather, just a half the night before instead of a full dose, but still get the morning one it. The night one is like the primer, and morning is the reinforcement.
Just started cruising, recently, and got really seasick on the very first day rounding the Virginia Capes. All the veteran cruisers and a few crew recommended ginger (ale, beer, etc) or anything naturally green, like apples or limes.
Helped me out on the rest of that cruise and the next two.
Wife really wants to take a family cruise and I'm not into it. Partially because I feel like it's a floating haven for germs, but also because seasickness.
Try a shorter, 3 or 4 day cruise, if you can. You can get accustomed to it without overcommitting time.
You can minimize health risks by eating at the main dining room or single serve kiosks.
As someone who regularly cruises, the germs thing is a real concern. All you can do is wash your hands and sanitize a million times (which they do make it easy to do). And sometimes you still catch something.
For what it's worth, if you are on one of the big boats in the Caribbean or some such, there often very little motion you will notice. The boats are big, have stabilizers and plan trips through calm water areas. Now if you are on a smaller boat, could be much more of an issue. Of course, I've not had problems on the few small boat trips I've had on rivers or the Long Island Sound and have only been on 1 big boat cruise. My girlfriend at he time said she was feeling the motion and needed to take meds and we were still at the dock, so a lot of it is just mental. If it is something that is a concern for you, you might have troubles even if there is little in the way of motion. She did fine on the meds though.
I would add that as long as you stay in the Caribbean on the big boats you'll be good. If taken the big ones out of New Jersey / New York, as well as headed to Bermuda. In both instances that boat was moving. The most recent trip back to New York being the worst, was definitely an experience watching the bow of the ship ~1000 feet away just rocking up and down a significant amount.
We have cruised several times, and have not had a lot of issues with germ generated sickness, but it does happen. Being on a ship with lots of little kids or partying young people tends to make that a little riskier, though Disney seems to do a good job of germ control. Do pack some Imodium, as if you seek care for anything illness related you will be asked to quarantine in your room until symptoms clear. My wife gets seasick, but only had an issue once, when a large storm hit us in the Caribbean thirty some years ago. The newer ships are more stable and the cruise lines do a better job of routing around the storms now, so the only time she takes dramamine now is if we take a snorkeling tour or some other tour involving a smaller boat, though she does make sure to face forward where there is fresh air on the tenders if we are not docked, just to be safe.
I was thinking stay out of the Coast Guard or Navy.
I knew guys that were excellent sailors that still got seasick bad for 2-3 days underway.
Yeah sometimes it's not even experience or the size of the weather.
For my money a confused sea state (where wind/waves may not be aligned, or there are kind of two competing swell directions for the non-mariners) is absolutely brutal on the senses since you can never fall into a rhythm of a wave period.
I never once got even woozy on the ship, but I've barfed all over at least a half a dozen head boats.
Of course, I was on an aircraft carrier...
Top 5 candy?
Might be an unpopular list?
Reese's, snickers, sour patch kids, Swedish fish, twix.
replace snickers with 3 musketeers and you d have my wife's list so not that unpopular
Idk, snickers is solid and this is coming from someone that doesn't like caramel. I'd replace twix with 3 musketeers, and I do like reeses cups but i'd have to swap them out for nerds or nerds gummies (those things are like crack).
Oh yeah those nerds gummy clusters just absolutely slap
Oh snickers would round out my top 5. But I'm not a huge candy person, I can't do swedish fish or sour patch kids. Really any candy that isn't chocolate isn't really appetizing to me.
1) You have a time machine to go back and re-live one night during your time at VT which night you got? and based on your responses lets take meeting your wife off the table.
2) Top five destinations you want to holiday
3) longest time you've held your breathe
Great questions!
1) I would pick one of the many fall Saturday weekends where me and a few friends would head out to Dragons Tooth and hike, camp, and build a fire. Just hang out with the boys and enjoy the time together before life and responsibilities arose.
2) hmmm, Italy (all of it lol, northern alps to south coast), Tokyo, Germany, Monaco, and Australia/NZ area of Oceania?
3) not long, maybe a minute
1) nice. good times I'm sure.
2) My advice: Italy, yes. Dolomites to Sicily. Amazing almost everywhere. Germany would skip and go to Poland. Much better. Tokyo and Japan is a definite yes. Monaco unless you got the money or amazing F1 tickets is a pass. Australia is amazing, lived there for a while. And New Zealand is also amazing but expensive. I just got back from a holiday there 2 days ago. Great times.
3) Unexpected 😲
I honeymooned in NZ and didn't find it that expensive, esp given exchange rate strongly favoring the usd. relative to a thailand or wherever, though -- for sure
when was that?
definitely depends on how you do it of course. But for food at a decent, not high end, restaurant it would be 200 to 300 nzd (100 to 160 usd) for 3 ppl. Hotels were overpriced for quality as well.
Tickets to tourist things also were higher than expected.
just what I found. Not the most expensive place I've been but definitely more expensive than I expected.
next round
1) the most frustrating part of your job that makes you go" why the fuck is this so stupid"?
2) miraculously you have enough power on that time machine for one more trip. This time you can go back and change one moment of time at VT that you think would make a positive impact on your life. What change are you gonna make?
3) Did you pee on the North Pole?
1. Eh the experience working in the civilian world before military helps me retain a bit of levity - there's jerks, all stars, and mediocrity in all jobs and the military isn't excluded from this. I guess I'd say specifically the Jones Act and acquisition timeliness becoming more laborious and with more oversight than is reasonable.
At the micro level I have a great crew and ship, they rock and overachieve every time.
2. Wouldn't change a thing. Taking my lumps switching majors and finding my way got me here, so I'm set. Sounds cliche but the challenges in my path have helped shape my worldview etc.
3. No, but we did see Santa! Also toured a German icebreaker, the PolarStern. Overall it is one of my cherished CG experiences, to get to 90°N
Next goal: get to 90°S
Now if he could do that while actually on an icebreaker, that would be one heck of an accomplishment!
Thanks for taking a turn Brian! Got a nominee for next?
Thanks everyone for the questions! Nope, whoever wants it next feel free to chime in
I still have on the nominee back burner:
Reesejenks520
HOAT
TheFifthFuller
Anyone interested?
Ok. Open for new nominations from the peanut gallery!
I'll do one of nothing but lies. If we need to fill in a gap.
Doesn't seem to be any interest in continuing this....I guess the idea has run its course.
I'm afraid some of us just aren't very interesting 🤷
You wanna take a turn?
I can if there's no other takers
Have at it! You're AMA #37