Google Kitsmas 2015
Dec. 30th, 2015 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tuftearsThis year the Google Kitsmas party was held at the USS Hornet museum up in Alameda. I dithered about going, nearly didn't-- I missed the 'RSVP' post, but wrote the party planners and was assured I should just pick up a wristband.
Overall it was a pretty good experience! The pictures, let me show you them.
Google provided a shuttle to and from the party. An hour bus ride each way doesn't really gladden my heart, but it's tons better than driving myself. (cue glance from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dracosphynx about my 'leash range')
Welcome to the USS Hornet museum!
There's just something... excitingly chunky and sleek about aircraft carriers, isn't there?
We climbed a rather steep ramp to get into the ship. This would NOT be a good place to bring the high heels, especially if you wanted to do much looking around.
I opted to start at one end of the ship, and was greeted first by this dance floor, presided over by a sharp-nosed fighter craft:
There were some groups queued up to go; they did great swing dances, vintage costumes and all. I wasn't sure if they were volunteers or prearranged in some way to attract people to the dance floor, but they put on a great show.
Signs pointed to 'hot chocolate' on the veranda, which sounded great. I dubiously navigated through the backstage of the museum, where various items were kept in storage, following the signs, and wound up here:
That's a pretty nice view of the bay! I think that's the Golden Gate bridge in the distance.
There was a pretty good view of this other ship docked alongside as well, but it's hard to make out much in the dark. The hot chocolate was pretty good, but this early in the evening hardly anyone was out on the veranda. Suits me fine. -_-
Okay, now I'm going to bunch the food pictures up in one place:
These were pretty good, just in really small quantities so they don't really fill you up.
Lots of beef, sliced and served on buns. Barbecue sauce or your choice of other condiments on the side. Yum!
I passed up most of the seafood; they were mainly shellfish, which I don't care for. I prefer 'regular' fish, the kind that has an internal skeleton.
Yeah, these things are as deadly as they sound.
I was hungry so I nommed one of these relatively simple-looking hotdogs. After having tried it, I don't think I'm a fan of the pretzel buns; they're rather hard and don't complement the hotdogs well.
So many tasty desserts!
The rootbeer parfaits were especially tempting.
Just completing the view of the desserts!
This fellow made me a non-alcoholic drink of some sort of lemon juice, ginger beer, and I forget what the third ingredient was. It was pretty good though!
Okay, time to get back to looking over the rest of the ship! The party was held in a huge space that ran nearly the length of the ship, with about ten or so aircrafts and exhibits on the sides.
Rawr, is Tiger!
The casino was nearly abandoned this early in the party, but was quite popular later once people had gotten their food.
These are some Apollo-related items. Not the actual lunar capsule, but a mockup, evidently.
Someone went to a lot of work for this mockup! Probably worthwhile for checking obvious stress problems with the interior design.
This is a mobile quarantine facility that was used for the astronauts when they returned, presumably so if they carried back some deadly disease from the Moon, it could be detected within some reasonable amount of time. Fortunately the Moon turned out to be lifeless, for the health of our heroes.
That's a mannequin in what looks like some sort of internal command center for the hangar.
Here, have a helicopter! It's neat to see how the rotor blades fold up so it can be stored. That was a common thing for most of these crafts.
Front-on view of a Crusader. I'm not sure what happened to the wings.
Another helicopter! That's a pretty big cockpit window. You could see everything if you were flying this thing.
Yet another helicopter! I shunned the swanky seafood.
Front view of that last helicopter. I learn this thing is called 'Seahorse'.
I wasn't expecting a propellor-driven plane, but this may have been one of the older planes used in World War II. Possibly the F4F Wildcat or the F6F Hellcat. (meow!)
This was just a model, not the actual plane, but it was still pretty big, held overhead near the ceiling. It's a B-25B Mitchell, a bomber.
I finally reached the other end of the hangar deck: another dance floor! Of a different kind though:
Almost certainly arranged performers, putting on an acrobatic act on rings suspended over the stage. Pretty!
I noticed signs pointing to 'the game room' belowdecks. Curious, I ventured into the depths.
This gives you a pretty good idea of what the interior architecture of a carrier is like. Exposed cabling, pipes, and cramped spaces. Not much like the starship Enterprise!
I discovered... a whole museum belowdecks. Eep. I could be here longer than I thought.
Here we have mannequins displaying the typical uniforms of the period.
The Hornet had a dog mascot, evidently. Not intentionally, but these things happen.
The party planners had evidently hoped that people would enjoy these games laid out in the main dining hall, but it looks to me like with the party lasting 3-4 hours, no one wanted to get into board games that might potentially run longer than that.
This was a pretty spacious room, evidently for crew meetings and whatnot.
Evidently the military hadn't been too sure on aircraft carriers to begin with, so they built a prototype as a proof of concept, just to make sure it would actually be possible to land a plane on one in the middle of the ocean. Good idea to test your ship designs first, IMO.
This is where they prepared meals for the crew. Not for the party; I'm pretty sure that relied on our vendors to bring previously cooked or prepared and ready-to-cook food.
I knew about Seuss as a children's book illustrator but I had been unaware until now that he was also a cartoonist for newspapers. Interesting!
This looks like a pilot's briefing room. Much smaller than the other spaces, big enough for one squad at a time.
In the event of boarding by hostiles, evidently, they had gun racks in the ship corridors.
This is what a real sickbay looks like! Not pictured are the number of rooms for the convalescents. There were a lot of them-- presumably to accommodate actual numbers of wounded or ill people, rather than the paltry three or so that the Enterprise starships would have been able to in their depicted sickbays.
As I was winding up my tour, I ran into this grizzled gent who was keen to tell me about the USS Hornet. Sadly I had to catch the shuttle back, but I did get his picture. According to him, the Hornet CV-12 (distinct from the CV-8 of the previous name) was never seriously damaged; at one point when it was attacked by Japanese torpedo bombers, because it was going backwards (it launched planes off of the fantail of the flight deck), they missed with their torpedoes because their training had taught them to anticipate the ship going forward.
This was one of the few times I've been at a party longer than the minimum-- mainly because there was quite a bit to look at. It was a pretty fun trip, I'm glad I managed to make it out!
Unrelated to the USS Hornet, but related to Google Christmas, I was surprised at one point to find carolers in our cafeteria:
Overall it was a pretty good experience! The pictures, let me show you them.
Google provided a shuttle to and from the party. An hour bus ride each way doesn't really gladden my heart, but it's tons better than driving myself. (cue glance from
dracosphynx about my 'leash range')Welcome to the USS Hornet museum!
There's just something... excitingly chunky and sleek about aircraft carriers, isn't there?
We climbed a rather steep ramp to get into the ship. This would NOT be a good place to bring the high heels, especially if you wanted to do much looking around.
I opted to start at one end of the ship, and was greeted first by this dance floor, presided over by a sharp-nosed fighter craft:
There were some groups queued up to go; they did great swing dances, vintage costumes and all. I wasn't sure if they were volunteers or prearranged in some way to attract people to the dance floor, but they put on a great show.
Signs pointed to 'hot chocolate' on the veranda, which sounded great. I dubiously navigated through the backstage of the museum, where various items were kept in storage, following the signs, and wound up here:
That's a pretty nice view of the bay! I think that's the Golden Gate bridge in the distance.
There was a pretty good view of this other ship docked alongside as well, but it's hard to make out much in the dark. The hot chocolate was pretty good, but this early in the evening hardly anyone was out on the veranda. Suits me fine. -_-
Okay, now I'm going to bunch the food pictures up in one place:
These were pretty good, just in really small quantities so they don't really fill you up.
Lots of beef, sliced and served on buns. Barbecue sauce or your choice of other condiments on the side. Yum!
I passed up most of the seafood; they were mainly shellfish, which I don't care for. I prefer 'regular' fish, the kind that has an internal skeleton.
Yeah, these things are as deadly as they sound.
I was hungry so I nommed one of these relatively simple-looking hotdogs. After having tried it, I don't think I'm a fan of the pretzel buns; they're rather hard and don't complement the hotdogs well.
So many tasty desserts!
The rootbeer parfaits were especially tempting.
Just completing the view of the desserts!
This fellow made me a non-alcoholic drink of some sort of lemon juice, ginger beer, and I forget what the third ingredient was. It was pretty good though!
Okay, time to get back to looking over the rest of the ship! The party was held in a huge space that ran nearly the length of the ship, with about ten or so aircrafts and exhibits on the sides.
Rawr, is Tiger!
The casino was nearly abandoned this early in the party, but was quite popular later once people had gotten their food.
These are some Apollo-related items. Not the actual lunar capsule, but a mockup, evidently.
Someone went to a lot of work for this mockup! Probably worthwhile for checking obvious stress problems with the interior design.
This is a mobile quarantine facility that was used for the astronauts when they returned, presumably so if they carried back some deadly disease from the Moon, it could be detected within some reasonable amount of time. Fortunately the Moon turned out to be lifeless, for the health of our heroes.
That's a mannequin in what looks like some sort of internal command center for the hangar.
Here, have a helicopter! It's neat to see how the rotor blades fold up so it can be stored. That was a common thing for most of these crafts.
Front-on view of a Crusader. I'm not sure what happened to the wings.
Another helicopter! That's a pretty big cockpit window. You could see everything if you were flying this thing.
Yet another helicopter! I shunned the swanky seafood.
Front view of that last helicopter. I learn this thing is called 'Seahorse'.
I wasn't expecting a propellor-driven plane, but this may have been one of the older planes used in World War II. Possibly the F4F Wildcat or the F6F Hellcat. (meow!)
This was just a model, not the actual plane, but it was still pretty big, held overhead near the ceiling. It's a B-25B Mitchell, a bomber.
I finally reached the other end of the hangar deck: another dance floor! Of a different kind though:
Almost certainly arranged performers, putting on an acrobatic act on rings suspended over the stage. Pretty!
I noticed signs pointing to 'the game room' belowdecks. Curious, I ventured into the depths.
This gives you a pretty good idea of what the interior architecture of a carrier is like. Exposed cabling, pipes, and cramped spaces. Not much like the starship Enterprise!
I discovered... a whole museum belowdecks. Eep. I could be here longer than I thought.
Here we have mannequins displaying the typical uniforms of the period.
The Hornet had a dog mascot, evidently. Not intentionally, but these things happen.
The party planners had evidently hoped that people would enjoy these games laid out in the main dining hall, but it looks to me like with the party lasting 3-4 hours, no one wanted to get into board games that might potentially run longer than that.
This was a pretty spacious room, evidently for crew meetings and whatnot.
Evidently the military hadn't been too sure on aircraft carriers to begin with, so they built a prototype as a proof of concept, just to make sure it would actually be possible to land a plane on one in the middle of the ocean. Good idea to test your ship designs first, IMO.
This is where they prepared meals for the crew. Not for the party; I'm pretty sure that relied on our vendors to bring previously cooked or prepared and ready-to-cook food.
I knew about Seuss as a children's book illustrator but I had been unaware until now that he was also a cartoonist for newspapers. Interesting!
This looks like a pilot's briefing room. Much smaller than the other spaces, big enough for one squad at a time.
In the event of boarding by hostiles, evidently, they had gun racks in the ship corridors.
This is what a real sickbay looks like! Not pictured are the number of rooms for the convalescents. There were a lot of them-- presumably to accommodate actual numbers of wounded or ill people, rather than the paltry three or so that the Enterprise starships would have been able to in their depicted sickbays.
As I was winding up my tour, I ran into this grizzled gent who was keen to tell me about the USS Hornet. Sadly I had to catch the shuttle back, but I did get his picture. According to him, the Hornet CV-12 (distinct from the CV-8 of the previous name) was never seriously damaged; at one point when it was attacked by Japanese torpedo bombers, because it was going backwards (it launched planes off of the fantail of the flight deck), they missed with their torpedoes because their training had taught them to anticipate the ship going forward.
This was one of the few times I've been at a party longer than the minimum-- mainly because there was quite a bit to look at. It was a pretty fun trip, I'm glad I managed to make it out!
Unrelated to the USS Hornet, but related to Google Christmas, I was surprised at one point to find carolers in our cafeteria:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-12-31 02:46 am (UTC)Also, the USS Hornet is really big if you take the regular tour, which I have. The engine room(s), particularly with the reverse gear, is impressive. Plus, there is the bridge, bakery area (separate from the cafeteria kitchen), the print shop with its own printing press, laundry... Very worthwhile.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-31 08:35 am (UTC)I have one of the books "Dr. Seuss Goes To War", featuring many famous artists who created lasting images.
It's part of my library to support my volunteering at InfoAge, a science center on what was New Jersay's Camp Evans (Army Signal Corps lab during WW II, specializing in radio, radar, weather forecasting, satellite technology).
no subject
Date: 2015-12-31 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-01 01:26 am (UTC)Alameda ?! I know that from Star Trek IV! It's full of nuclear weezils!
I ought to visit the Intrepid again, but it's just too cold on deck now :-(
no subject
Date: 2015-12-31 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-31 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-31 10:46 pm (UTC)I like how they've labelled what's in each of the foods. Even someone like me would be able to enjoy that spread =^.^=.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-04 03:25 am (UTC)The unused room with boardgames makes me sad, but I can see why people fanned out to look at the ship.