Birthday at sea
Birthdays have never been my sort of thing. I think it's because I have had some less than enjoyable ones in my past and because I really do not like surprises or being put on a stage. However, despite my predisposition towards the personal holiday I was quite surprised how this year's annual celebration came off.
For obvious reasons this year's birthday has been different. First off, this is the first year I have been in a climate where I feel warm when I go outside, second, this is my first birthday at sea, and third, I'm am only with people whom which I have known for a little over two weeks. Among those many people is Taylor. Taylor is a clam lover/marine mammal hater from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She's worth mentioning here because we share the same birthday.
The day started off pretty early in comparison to most of my days out here. The previous night I told the chief scientist that I would stand the 8:00am to 12:00pm science watch. What this means is that I would go and sit inside two steel shipping containers filled with computers and monitors and watch what�s going on at the bottom of the ocean for four hours. About 15 minutes after I sit down at my station, the monitors are filled with images of black "smoke". This is a good thing. This is why the science team is out here, to find new areas of hydrothermal venting, commonly referred to as "black smokers." About twenty minutes later we discovered the source of all the smoke. In the monitors were six chimneys, spewing super-heated, mineral-rich black water into the ocean. The chimneys were estimated to be 14 meters tall. That�s about the height of a four-story house. The other birthday-person, Taylor, is also on watch and we begin to lobby for naming rights since the vents were discovered on our birthday. So far the issue remains unresolved.
The rest of the morning passed with out too much fan fare. After my watch I made my way up to the galley for lunch. It was then that I started to see the writing on the wall, literally. Someone had made signs and posted them all of the ship informing everyone that it was Taylor and my birthdays. A few hours later Taylor and I discovered the cakes. The stewards had been nice enough to make us both birthday cakes. They spelled my name wrong but who the hell cares, it was a cake.
At dinner they sang happy birthday to us. You could tell they liked me more because more of them said "Happy Birthday Webb and Taylor" than "Happy Birthday Taylor and Webb." After dinner the ship got pretty quite, or so it seemed. I was finishing up some work when Stacy, Kayla and others, systematically began dropping hints that I should make my down to cabin #23. When I arrived I found half the science party there to celebrate the two-person birthday. Now if you've ever been on the NOAA Ship Ron H. Brown, the R/V Atlantis, the R/V Rodger Revelle or the R/V Thomas G. Thompson you know that the science cabins aren't the most spacious of places. Somehow we managed to cram 20 people into cabin #23. For those of you not familiar with these ships, imagine 20 people crammed into a VW Jetta. Same idea.
The soiree was a grand time and the motley crew even managed to get me the sweetest of presents, a 32oz Brahma (tears). All in all not a bad day, I might even start to look forward to my birthday from now on.
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