I reported in March 2013 as an FNG for VFA-131, the WILDCATS, while it was deployed to the North Arabian Sea. I had shown up a day before the Air Wing was to support Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Three months and three stopovers later, my brief deployment was coming to an end. After three months of flying and not having embarrassed myself on board the ship, I was ready to go home. “Spur,” the OPSO shouted from across the ready room. “The Skipper wants you to be part of the Air Power Demo. You will be part of the water wall. So I thought, “Great, how can I screw this up? I'll drop four bombs, with an experienced division chief as a guide, what could go wrong?" The planning began. We watched the gouge of the latest demonstration of air power. We're checking and rechecking how they used WASP to drop the bombs and make them hit a mile abeam the ship, in time. After doing some calculations, recognizing myself now that I remembered SOHCAHTOA from high school calculations, we had determined what we needed to do to remove the bombs and make this presentation beautiful for everyone. The plan was that I flew to the wing and pickled my bombs while I saw the third drop from the lead jet. Easy day. First practice went great, no problems, our time was a few seconds behind but still within the established time window. In my head, as we launched the SIM, I imagined what the bombs would look like coming off the jet in a high drag configuration and pickling when I imagined the third one coming off. I had this suit in my suitcase, what could go wrong now? The air power demo is finally here. I wasn't particularly worried about how it would turn out. The instructions were the same as the first, with one change: Our load now included a bucket of rockets. My manager ordered them to be handed out at our entrance and... middle of paper... more to help balance the workload when things go wrong. No one intentionally practices these non-standard deliveries. Even when briefing something multiple times, as things change, the “holes in the Swiss cheese” can start to align. This is where a good brief, execution of the brief and time risk management during each sortie come into play, in an attempt to prevent a bad situation from getting worse or even better and never happening. Looking back, I don't know if I could have done anything differently. The brief was there, we started to meet the brief, I made a mistake. Through time risk management we managed to prevent the situation from worsening. Although embarrassing, it was a great learning experience for me, I'll never forget the time spent in the pickle on my last cruise flight, as we flew home to the newer guys in the Air wing.