Since we found Ahab (Yay!!!) this thread has become a bit like a super-bounce ball zinging in various directions!
Funny you use that descriptive, Rory.
As you may recall our face-to-face (and very enjoyable) dinner several weeks ago, and our spectrum of topics and rabbit trails chased that evening.... I once enjoyed a fine dining experience with Ahab, aka: Rocky, while on a lobbying trip to Washington, DC in the spring of 2018. We met at a tavern in Georgetown in which history records that JFK proposed marriage to Jackie in one of their front booths. The steaks were utterly delicious, but the conversation was even more enjoyable, diverse, rapid-fire, borderline-schizophrenic (bottom border), convoluted, fun, and definitely charged full steam ahead in every one of the VARIOUS DIRECTIONS you implied above. What a great and memorable encounter.
I really got to know Ahab that night. I appreciate him even more than I did before he went AWOL. I was also privileged to have maintained occasional contact with him - including that meeting in D.C. - during his SS sabbatical. DANG! - It sure is good to have you back, Rocky!
If anyone ever gets to the DC/Virginia area I would highly recommend trying to meet our celebrity AHAB if you can. The Smithsonian pales in comparison.
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During my time in service I think I had their "boxed lunches" only 5 to 10 times total. I was suitably unimpressed.
I was permanent party in support of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. Our assigned "dining facility" near our dormitory was fully funded not by the military, but by the National Security Agency. Steaks and seafood cooked to order were available most evenings, and more exotic offerings were dished up at least a couple of times each month. Yes, we were spoiled.
If we were on duty, the cafeteria in the operations building was also available - they kept 20,000 fed 24/7. Their food was almost as good as our "Chow Hall", but more mass-produced assembly line fare.
Whenever NSA sent me traveling I was always in civilian clothes, very young, but traveling on NSA credentials either solo or with one or two others only. Due to the classified purposes of these visits every cook seemed blindly ordered to serve up their finest meals. I always figured they had NO IDEA who I was or why I was there so they'd better try to impress me/us. Needless to say - I never complained.
One trip was aboard a Coast Guard "ship" for about 4 days. For some (secret) reason we lost sight of any "coast" very shortly after weighing anchor in order to do what we were sent to do. The crew loved having me aboard. Seems NSA was funding the trip and they had taken aboard all manner of prime cuts of fresh meats, and all the trimmings including as one Coastie said: "More desserts than this boat had ever floated." For the most part, they had no patrol duties during that trip and were only my "water taxi" to a point in the ocean to observe something, so for them it was a cruise rather than work.
So that's some of my military dining experiences. I had it easy.
Sometime I'll write about being sent to some of our Embassies.
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So....
What's another random thought to bat around for a while???