My Birthday Eve and Navchaps

It's Friday, 30 January. Tomorrow I turn 24 years old. As my friend, Justin puts it, sometime tomorrow I'll be making my 24th revolution around the sun. Kinda interesting when you think about it that way. To be honest, I'm not looking forward to my birthday. I don't really want to talk about it but I just don't like celebrating my birthday. Today is also the arrival day for the US Navy Cargo Handling and Port [NAVCHAP] Battalion #1 out of Williamsburg, VA. The Navchaps are a feared group of sailors whose sole job every summer down here is to unload the container vessel that comes down and provides the town 80% of it's resources and to load the vessel back up with crap that is to be thrown away, sold or "retroed", or just "dissapeared". Horror stories have been floating around for years about Navchaps breaking into rooms and stealing things from poor, unsuspecting McMurdoans weeks before they redeploy back into the real world. Rumors go around that these men and women are the fuck-ups of the Navy: cast outs on their last leg before court-martial or dishonorable discharge. A lot of them are harden human beings. Several have gang tattoos. Having a healthy distrust in rumors and social stereotyping, as well as being severely drunk, I decided to buddy up and talk to several of them. Not a single one of them came off as seasoned Antarctic veterans had described in their wanton stories of horror and despair. A lot of them were interested in where I was from and what I did down here. One of the officers' father had worked down here as a firefighter back in the 70's! Some how, probably from one of the other firefighters I was with, they found out that my birthday was 24 hours in the coming and decided to take me back to the part of building 155 they'd be occupying throughout the duration of vessel offload. I continued to drink and party with them till midrats [midnight rations] time. After meeting several new and interesting people as well as filling my stomach, I stumbled the 500 yds back to my room to sleep and get ready for work...