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Groundhog Day at sea

I’ve just finished my second Monday this week. It didn’t just feel like another Monday, it actually WAS another Monday.

Yesterday was Monday, June 23, onboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. Sometime during the day, we crossed the international date line, and we didn’t just set the clocks back — we set the calendar back. Or more accurately, we simply had a do-over day.

As for me, I chose not to make my second Monday a carbon copy of the day before. My first Monday entailed 61/2 hours in a Navy helicopter taking photographs –- or waiting to take photographs. Some turned out well and others were a bust. But that’s how it goes sometimes. Some things are better left undone a second time.

Some called the occasion “Groundhog Day,” and for those sailors there was a requisite showing of the movie of the same name starring Bill Murray, in which the character relives the exact same day over and over again.

“Well, if you don’t like today, you can do it all again tomorrow,” said Chief Mass Communications Specialist (SW) Jason Chudy, with whom I share an office onboard the ship. “The bad part of getting an extra day is, for us, it ended up being a Monday.”

About the only blip on the radar was that the computer folks shut down access to some services to let the change in days go quietly by -– such things don’t react well to events like Y2K and extra days in the week.

Even e-mail was slightly affected. When I fired it up this morning, nothing new was in my box — or so I thought. Scrolling down, I found all my new e-mail below the e-mail that had arrived on my first Monday — a fact that was jokingly discussed around the lunch table in the wardroom. And oh, by the way, though it was still Monday, no one was served the exact same food as yester-Monday. It was taco day, right on schedule.

In any event, the second Monday came and went without major problems as we continue to steam east, toward Hawaii. The only difference for us is that we’re now behind the United States in time, not ahead of it like before. Does that really matter? No, we’re still on the other side of the world.

The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and her escorts, a Canadian frigate (foreground) and Ottawa steam in formation in the Pacific Ocean shortly before crossing the international date line. The two frigates are part of Kitty Hawk’s escort to Pearl Harbor, where she will take part in the semiannual Rim of the Pacific exercise.