“I love my country, it’s the government I’m afraid of!”
God Bless America and Happy Fourth of July! Very real blood, sweat, and tears were shed (and continue to be) for us to enjoy freedoms that those in many countries can only dream about. Yet slowly, we are letting our freedom be exchanged for “security.” Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve either one”. You don’t have to look hard to see signs of this in our daily life. The mere fact that our lawmakers seem fit to pass thousands of new laws each year under the guise of “protecting” is evidence enough.
I continue to be asked on almost a daily basis, “how is the market?” Well, the good news is that things aren’t getting worse; the bad news is that they aren’t getting better! Activity is up but done deals are down. I used to say that we are making progress, 2 steps forward and one step back however, it is more like 2 steps forward and 1 ¾ steps back. Now that is still progress but it is a battle and highly stressful.
To put a face to this, I thought I would share some short examples;
- Waiting 9 months on a 10,000 SF deal because the government contract award has been delayed for 30 days – 9 times!
- A buyer ready to buy a building but waiting for the last 12 months to be paid for services rendered to the U.S. Government
- 10 months waiting for government approval of an 800 SF Yoga Studio because they were going to have a 100 SF massage room (city thought it was for prostitution)
- A tutoring center that’s been open for 10+ years moved across the street to expand (same zoning) got re-classified as a school and is required to do over $70K of improvements (firewalls, drinking fountains, etc.) for the same kind of space as they are in
- The city requiring a 30,000 SF trade school to put sprinklers into existing space, and pay a penalty/fine for converting space from retail to school because of the potential loss of sales tax revenue to the city (even though the space is vacant)
Freedom is a precious thing and it requires personal responsibility to sustain its life and vibrancy. A truly free man or woman much prefers to try and fail repeatedly, than to not really try at all because they have given up their responsibility to someone or something else. We are hard-wired for freedom and to accept anything less will only result in frustration and misery.
I am going to keep this letter short as I jet forward to break these bureaucratic log jams and achieve victory in the form of closed deals and a paycheck! I hope you enjoy Rick Reilly’s irreverent look at what our nation’s armed forces do daily to keep us free.
F-14 Flight
Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your country’s most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have. John Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity… Move to Guam. Change your name. Fake your own death! Whatever you do.
Do Not Go!!!
I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was pumped. I was toast! I should’ve known when they told me my pilot would be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. Whatever you’re thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like, triple it. He’s about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair, finger-crippling handshake — the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way. Fast.
Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the voice of NASA missions. (‘T-minus 15 seconds and counting’. Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say, ‘We have liftoff’. Biff was to fly me in an F- 14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60 million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin Montgomerie.
I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next morning. ‘Bananas,’ he said. ‘For the potassium?’ I asked. ‘No,’ Biff said, ‘because they taste about the same coming up as they do going down.’ The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign — like Crash or Sticky or Leadfoot. But, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to nail Nicole Kidman, this was it. A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would ‘egress’ me out of the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked unconscious. Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up. In minutes we were firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over another F-14. Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over Hell. Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, snap rolls, loops, yanks and banks. We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute.
We chased another F-14, and it chased us. We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we did 90-degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G force of 6.5, which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me, thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.
And I egressed the bananas. And I egressed the pizza from the night before. And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G’s, I was egressing stuff that never thought would be egressed.
I went through not one airsick bag, but two. Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point, as we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target and the G’s were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw down.
I used to know ‘cool’. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know ‘cool’. Cool is guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and freon nerves. I wouldn’t go up there again for Derek Jeter’s black book, but I’m glad Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home stand.
A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said he and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he’d send it on a patch for my flight suit.
What is it? I asked.
‘Two Bags.’
~ Rick Reilly – Famous sports writer
