Circumnavigation, risking it all
Prologue
Note: This series is autobiographic, the events are true as I can get ‘em to memory, but it’s been 22 years and a few details may have run together. It’s long and takes a while to pick up steam, hopefully not too boring ^_^
In 1996 I was active duty Navy and assigned to my first ship, a guided missile frigate home-ported in Mississippi. I was 23 years old, happily married, full of myself and from what I could tell, at the start of a successful career.
I had already completed one deployment to the Middle-East and had the obligatory “Sailor experience” under my belt of wandering from bar-to-bar, sampling food from cafes and street vendors, shopping in bazaars and boutiques in Barcelona, Haifa, Hurghada, Massawa, Djibouti, Manamah, Dubai, Muscat and Marseilles.
Through all of that I maintained my marital vows and thought myself all the better for it. I had been tempted, tested and tried numerous times and escaped with my virtue unscathed. I wore my fidelity like a crown and secretly judged my shipmates who failed the test. *Sigh* The higher the pedestal, the farther the fall.