Adrift on a sea of occupational variety

You’ll never get rich doing what I do, but sometimes there are payoffs in another currency. What I refer to is this job’s tendency to provide folks like me some experiences folks like you — which is to say people with a ‘real’ job — miss out on.
This summer is a case in point.
Two highlights stand out, both of which happen to involve old airplanes.
First, videographer Eric Eckert and I went aloft in a fully restored, vintage B-17 bomber. Aluminum Overcast was the ship’s name and she was a beauty.
We took our media flight out of Lincoln and had full run of the plane while aloft. The thing fairly bristled with 50-caliber machine guns, even to include long bands of ammo just like the World War II crews would have seen and, unfortunately, relied upon.
For the privilege of such a remarkable experience people with ‘real’ jobs were asked to pay up to $400. Not Eric and me. They invited us to go, charged us nothing and when it was over even thanked us for coming.
Over the years I’ve gotten in on more than my share of special moments like this one as part of being in the newspaper business. The next one this summer came more recently when I climbed aboard a KC-135 Stratotanker and flew with the Guard and Reserve Bosslift to San Antonio.
Again we flew out of Lincoln, this time in the capable hands of pilots Capt. Ben West and Capt. Ed Conner. This crazy plane, the backbone of our military’s mid-air refueling capability, holds something like 30,000 gallons of gas when fully loaded. Someone told me, that much fuel weighs more than the plane itself. Thirty-eight of us sat buckled into troop jump seats along the sides of the plane while taking off and landing, but when we were at altitude we were free to wander around and examine this huge mother ship whose sole job is to feed other planes.
On the return trip we hooked up (literally in this case) with a plane of the same size for a refueling mission. This was a treat indeed.
Our boom operator was Master Sgt. Mike Mayfield, like the rest of the crew a military reservist. Twice I was able to lie down alongside Mike in the tail section of the plane and lean out over him a bit to line my camera up with the window through which he was looking. My first glance was astonishing. There, so close I could have recognized the other pilots had I known them, was this enormous plane flying way too close for comfort. Well, for my comfort anyway. Mike acted like it was no big deal.
There was no fear at all, just amazement at the ability of these pilots and crew to accomplish such a remarkable feat and make it look so easy. It made for a rare and memorable morning. The photos, which are in a gallery at www.yorknewstimes.com if you’re interested, were pretty decent. In some of them Mayfield and the other pilots are working together to connect the boom with the receiver. Other pictures show the two massive planes flying casually along as fuel pours from us to them.
Later I found out this was all accomplished at 21,000 feet and a speed of 440 miles per hour.
And so this adventure is added to guided tours inside the danger zone of forest fires, taking aerial photos out the open window of a tilted Cessna, spending some quality time with Rulon Gardner, likewise with Charlie Pride and on and on.
Next up? That would be kneeling down on the sidelines at Husker games to photograph the Big Red in glorious Memorial Stadium. I’ve ridden down in the elevator with Johnny Rodgers and Zac Taylor, stood in line at the buffet table with Brent Musburger, said hello to Ronnie Lott and Marcus Allen, chatted with Jerry Tagge and much more.
So, what have we learned? Other than working most nights, every weekend and being blistered by nasty, profoundly discouraging phone calls and e-mails, the job ain’t half bad.
Contact — stephen.moseley@yorknewstimes.com