Adventure definitely runs through my veins and when new opportunities arise I tend to jump on them. There is something about the unknown, the new, and the amazing that draws me in like a kid with a new bike and a large imagination. When getting a new bike it seemed like possibilities were endless; a bike magically turned into a rocket powered space vehicle that made traveling to the solar system’s outer ring as easy as a ride to the local candy store.
Now this trip wasn’t my imagination nor was it a trip to candy store. It was a real life trip aboard one of the largest naval ships ever built – the USS Nimitz (CVN 68). It all started one day, while on my way to a home inspection, when a friend, and previous client, asked me if I would like to accompany him and his father aboard the USS Nimitz. Simply put, I was floored with the invitation.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous yet who could pass up this opportunity? As a seafaring guy, I was ready for the adventure of embarking Everett on Thursday and arriving to San Fransisco on Sunday – which also coincided with the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The trip started out by going through security, boarding the ship, getting to the birthing, and then venturing through the many causeways and a labyrinth of bulk heads and narrow corridors with enough steel pipe to run a gas line from the north slope to Seattle. It was a challenge obtain my bearings in the ship yet after a few days I had some sense of direction as there is only so many places to go. If you fall off; you went to far.
Some of my favorite parts of the trip has to be spending so much time on the flight deck, seeing the various levels of the island with even sitting in the Captain’s chair. I toured through the fo’c'sle (where the anchor chains are kept), the bubble (a launch control center for the flight deck), the hydraulic rooms for the catch cables, the crash and salvage equipment, the F-18s and traveling underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and Oakland Bridge aboard a aircraft carrier. There is to much to list and activities done that I’ll let the movie and pictures do the talking.
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