You know that feeling you have when you lean just a touch too far back in your chair?
It’s like a combination of fear, panic, and a tingly-kind-of-awesome-rush-that-you-won’t-admit-you-kind-of-liked.
So, I have this unique opportunity to get a rare, firsthand look at a US Navy aircraft carrier, as well as interact with the men and women who serve on board. If approved, in the next few days I’ll be participating on an embark aboard the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) under the Commander Naval Air Force Atlantic (CNAL) Distinguished Visitor (DV) program.
According to Wikipedia:
The USS George H.W. Bush is the tenth and final Nimitz-class supercarrier of the United States Navy. She is named for the 41st President of the United States and former Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush, who was a naval aviator during World War II.
This ship is somewhere out in the Atlantic–they didn’t say where. The military seems not very big on announcing to the world the exact coordinates of its assets.
It’s all a bit fuzzy. It’s all a bit scary. It’s that leaning just a touch too far back in the chair feeling.
Of course it didn’t help my nerves at all when I had to fill out the next-of-kin notification form. This form is so that, in case something pathological happens on the trip, the Navy will let my nearest kin know that something, um, un-routine happened while I was in the immediate vicinity.
You see, this ain’t no simulation. I’ll be dropped onto an operational aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of, well, operations.
One paragraph in particular, among a page’s worth of warnings that I had to sign-off on, jumped out at me:
In consideration of being allowed to receive a flight onboard a Navy aircraft without having received the rigorous and time intensive aircrew medical screening, physiology training, and water survival training, I expressly assume all risks, including personal injury or death, arising out of my participation in the flight.
I think what they they are trying to say is this: “there aren’t any do-overs.” It’s not like a video game, where, if your character dies, you press a button and you get to try again.
This will be an operational ship environment with hazards not commonly found in the local Starbucks–metal pipes extending through hallways, low metal door frames, metal “knee-knockers” in random locations, darkened passageways, airplane arresting cables that slice and dice, anchors, chains, ropes, lines, rolling stairways, and having to climb at least 10 flights of steep stairs multiple times throughout the day. Oh, and high speed aircraft landing on and being catapulted from a ship being tossed about by roiling ocean waves.
And that’s what to expect as long as everything is calm and steady.
I was all for it, I thought, but after the third time I read, “inherently dangerous and involving substantial risk of injury or death,” I felt like my chair was leaning back a little too far to be fun anymore.
But you know what? It’s not meant to be fun.
Thousands of men and women sacrifice their lives every day in the military to help preserve our freedoms, and for many service members that aircraft carrier, or ones just like it, is their career, passion, and world.
This is my chance to interact with them, to hear their stories, to experience, if only briefly, what they experience on a daily basis, and to then try to convey that to the public via my writings, pictures, and videos.
And for those couple of crusty souls who might object to the government spending taxpayer money on military outreach or on me, a civilian, to spend time on a military aircraft carrier…
You know the type–those fist-shaking, feet-stamping souls who shout from their couches into the tv screens, saying spittle-flecked things like, “I don’t want the money I paid on taxes being wasted by the Government on that sort of cow pucky! It’s unconstitutional, I tell you!”
Well, don’t worry. I am paying for my own expenses in order to participate in this adventure. I’m paying for the chance to spend time with military service members, to see their world, and to thank them for what they do.
It’s my risk, my money, my time, my opportunity.
My sponsor for this trip is Dennis Hall, founder of the Avere Group. In addition to his company’s multimedia production business, as a community service Dennis helps facilitate military-public outreach by organizing embarks for authors, filmmakers, journalists, and writers. This outreach program began when Dennis and Guy Kawasaki organized the first embark in May 2009 to the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) aircraft carrier. Since then Dennis has continued to take “small and large groups together on extraordinary adventures to fascinating, mysterious places.”
I’m currently waiting for the paperwork to be finalized. In the meantime, you can check out what’s happening with Naval Aviation, and be sure to follow me @kendallgiles.com for updates.