San Diego-AmeriCANS
Permission to Go Ashore
Two returns to San Diego, one aircraft carrier, the Kissing Sailor, and the older Carnival Splendor Black Swan story that kept following me back to port.
San Diego has always looked like arrival to me: carriers at the waterfront, sailors ashore, and the Pacific holding every unfinished story just beyond the harbor.
Good Morning, San Diego
By 2018, the waterfront had become a place to revisit rather than escape from. The Kissing Sailor stood where memory and performance meet.
The Kissing Sailor
Good morning, San Diego.
It is better to ask for forgiveness than permission to go ashore.Sea Years Field Note
On the USS Midway Flight Deck
The carrier became the viewing platform. In the background sat another ship entirely: the disabled Carnival Splendor, brought into San Diego after losing power at sea.
Carrier in Front. Cruise Ship Behind.
On the USS Midway flight deck, with the crippled Carnival Splendor in the background. Happy Fourth.
Permission to Go Ashore
The harbor seen from a flight deck instead of a promenade.
No Noose Is Good News
Aircraft carriers may look like accidents searching for coordinates. This time, however, the casualty was not a battleship. It was a cruise ship.
No Noose Is Good News
Carnival Cruise Control
Ironically, aircraft carriers are accidents looking for a place to happen. This time it was not a battleship but a cruise ship.
The people at Carnival were the Tim Gunns of the industry: they made it work, no matter what.
The response went into overdrive. We stayed three nights at the Hyatt. Carnival paid for the flight to Paris, reimbursed the voyage, and gave us another cruise. The “Walmart of cruising” lived up to its moniker: pay less and have more fun.
The Crippled Splendor
A catastrophic power failure at sea can feel like winning the wrong lottery: improbable, disruptive, and strangely generous once the compensation begins.
Carnival Splendor
A cruise ship turned news event, then personal mythology.
Flag, Rights and Compensation
I wrote then that Carnival ships were flagged under Panama and that passengers surrendered more protection than they realized when they bought a ticket.
Whatever the legal fine print, the practical response was unmistakable: hotel nights, flights, reimbursement, and another voyage.
Story—or Black Swan Event?
The event was not on the scale of an oil spill, a market crash, or 9/11. But it had the same smaller architecture: low predictability, high impact, and a narrative assembled afterward to make the surprise look obvious.
Last Man Out of a Burning Building
The ship had already accumulated bad luck. Two weeks earlier, I had written about a crew member jumping overboard.
After five ships and fifteen months at sea, I joked that I did not want to be the last man out of a burning building. I left the Splendor as Art Director— then boarded again as a paying passenger because the cruise was already booked.
What you do not know can be far more relevant than what you do know.Field Note on Randomness
Read the full Black Swan reflection
While it felt like winning the lottery to experience a catastrophic power failure at sea, this was no BP oil spill, stock-market crash, or 9/11. Nevertheless, when disaster strikes, we blame it on the Black Swan dynamic: something highly improbable that we retrofit with a narrative and later rationalize as entirely predictable.
It made me think of meaningful coincidence and Being Fooled by Randomness: the architecture of my own brain, convinced that things happen by chance when they may actually be happening by design.
Black Swan logic makes what you do not know far more relevant than what you do know. Is it not strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen?
Computers, the Harry Potter books, 9/11, and Susan Boyle all belong to a world increasingly shaped by unlikely twists that nobody successfully forecasts. The more certain we become about what will happen, the more likely we are to be sideswiped by what actually happens.
Not only world events, but life itself often moves like this: nothing, nothing, boredom, hard work, a minor breakthrough, more work, tedium, a setback, routine—and then suddenly, BA-BAM. Out of the blue, a major can of whoop-ass is delivered to the door.
My own personal globalization had begun to feel cumulative: a handful of shock-and-awe experiences, each carrying Black Swan dynamics.
The Harbor Keeps the Evidence
San Diego gave the story a fixed horizon: the USS Midway, the damaged Splendor, the Kissing Sailor, and the shore I kept returning to. A Black Swan looks random from the water. From land, it begins to resemble a chapter.