2009 Bayliner Owners Club Military Servicemen Outing
My last post was in response to a story in another thread which talked about the daughter of one of our members being given free coffee and a first class upgrade on one of her recent flights for serving her country. That thread had prompted me to talk about my service in the Army and how I was also treated upon my return from IRAQ 18 years ago. This got me to thinking about how we as the BOC could do something to give back to our current service men and women. So here comes an idea.......
Would anyone else be interested in setting up a nationwide boat outing day/weekend/month in 2009 to take out these people on our boats? I'm talking about the injured, still healthy, men and women which have finished or are on leave from their tours in Iraq and abroad... This would mean multiple locations, putting soldiers together with us and kind of letting you do the leg work to possibly finding more boats near you to accomodate everyone. There would be many details to discuss.
I think we Bayliner owners are of a different breed of boaters which want to spread the infection of our loave of boats... Am I wrong to think that? Is this too big of an idea? I think in terms of website programming and to set this up would be doable. We set up a list of boaters, locations, dates, and capacities. We work to publicize the event to get connected with the soldiers, we assign them to certain captains nationwide, we capture the event on our cameras, and post our pics and videos and such online. And maybe we do it every year!
One of the things which makes me think that this is a possibility is that this past summer and the summer before that I participated in an event in which we take out kids which are currently and have beaten cancer among other illnesses. We take them out on Lake Michigan for a 2-3 hour boat ride to the next harbor to the north and back and then treat them to lunch and a pool party at the marina. The kids love it.
Who is to say that we can't do it as a thanks to our armed services personnel? Instead of a commercial event like Aquapalooza which is sponsored by Searay, this could be something which starts with the BOC and becomes a huge sponsored event involving many different types of boaters.
Anyone want to spitball ideas? I mean really! Let's do something for them! Let's treat them to a fun day on the water! After coming home from Iraq I would have loved to do something like this.
Quote me, PM me, whatever, if you want to talk, I'm open... Got any ideas or responses?
2009 Bayliner Owners Club Military Servicemen Outing
