Last year Guy Kawasaki visited the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier and hatched a plan with Dennis Hall and Bill Reichert to bring a group of bloggers on a embark the following year. As a result, a group of bloggers was chosen for that mission. I was thrilled to receive the official invite from Lieutenant Commander Charlie Brown, Public Affairs Director for the Commander – Naval Air Forces – Pacific (COMNAVAIRPAC) to be part of the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) Embark May 29-30.
The USS Nimitz is an aircraft supercarrier in the United States Navy. We were invited on the Nimitz as bloggers to experience life on the carrier and bring that perspective back to our audiences, an opportunity I could not resist. Also, when the Navy invites you to go, you go – its your duty! Not to mention the excitement of leaving my mom sweats at home and wearing a flightsuit instead, flying in a C-2A Greyhound to land on the carrier deck, watching the aircraft hooks catch the cable as they land on the flight deck (called “traps”), touring the carrier, talking with the crew and spending one night on board.
Here is a picture of Charlene Li (left) and me in pilot flight suits. I was singing the Top Gun theme song in my head while smiling for this picture.
Although the original invite list was a bigger group, the real adventurers who accepted the challenge to embark on the USS Nimitz were:
Blogging crew part 1 (left to right): Andrew Nystrom ,Beth Blecherman, Guy Kawasaki ,Charlene Li , Captain Mike Manazir, Jenny Lawson, Jennifer Leo,Jennifer Van Grove, Bill Reichert.
Blogging Crew part 2: Dennis Hall, Robert Scoble, Pamela Slim, Captain Mike Manazir, Jennifer Jones, Andy Sernovitz, Jefferson Wagner a.k.a. Zuma Jay.
Captain (Mr.) Carroll LeFon, USN (ret.) (not pictured) was also on the Embark. He not only wore his cool flight style leather jacket throughout the embark, but also is a (dad) blogger himself and wrote a great post with details about the USS Nimitz. Guy Kawaski’s post provides chronological details of the trip and Jennifer Van Grove with her impressions. Jennifer Jones was the trip podcaster. Charlene Li’s post has a summary with links to all of our posts. Andrew Nystrom from the LA Times and Robert Scoble have Flickr groups. Andy Sernovitz and Pamela Slim posted with lessons learned. Chris Pirillo went on an Embark the weekend after our trip.
I loaded my pictures to Flickr the day after I returned from the trip. But it took me a few of weeks to post. First I had end of school year activities to manage and then a week with all three boys at home to deal with. Any working mom knows that time with their kids is priceless but exhausting. My prime blogging time (9pm – 12am) was impacted after spending full days with my boys. I just sat in bed each night next to my computer with no energy to type. Instead, I turned on episodes of my favorite shows recorded on TIVO including The Daily Show and The Stephen Colbert show. Luckily I found the final motivation to write my Nimitz post after seeing that Stephen Colbert had also ventured on a trip to support our troops with his four-day (U.S.O. tour) “Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando”.
