Week 54 - Blackbird

Fair warning to anyone who doesn't like planes, but this post is going to be primarily all pictures of them from our trip to Dulles over Labor Day weekend. Come to think of it, this is really the first over-weekend trip we've taken anywhere since the blog, so I've had to figure out how to break apart the post to match my week requirement. So this week will be Fri-Sun of the trip, and then next week will have the cap-off at Gettysburg on Monday. But first things first... 

This week was the kickoff for college football and things are already rowdy in our house. Luckily, Friday was gameday for my Spartans, and so I dressed our little Hannah up in her first Spartan jersey, a onesie that Amanda gave me for pre-Father's Day this summer. Hannah has a long road of B1G strife ahead of her and it is only further complicated by the fact that we figured out her daycare room leader is a scUM fan. I can only imagine what cute craft she has dreamed up to send Hannah home with, painted in the hideous maize and blue. And what's with that, anyhow? M!c#!g@n, the school that was too good to teach the "lower callings" of agriculture, had the audacity to pick a school color called "maize"? And it doesn't even look good on them. I bet you, that if someone in rush hour had a maize and blue car, I would hit it by accident, just out of the pure nature of bred and raised disgust. 

But I digress... Hannah is adorable in her little green jersey, right up to the time when I drop her off. I kindly tell the lady that it would be great if they can protect it at all costs, since Mommy would really like her to spit up on it and change into a spare Buckeye onesie (which are in no short supply). All she has to do is keep it clean for 3 hours, but nope, we hear later that it was no more than 30-40 minutes after I left and the outfit was toast. We are not off to a good start for the underdogs.

I won't even pretend to waste your time with regalia from work. Every hour I punched at work this week was just in anticipation and preparation for skipping ASAP on Friday. I had nothing to watch, just petty tasks to knock out, and a lecture on ruminant microbiology and the diversity of functions within the microbiome. Killed that, besides taking just a bit too long, and booked it for the in-laws to depart on the long-awaited pilgrimage to the Smithsonian Dulles Air & Space Museum. But wait, why won't my car start? Inexplicably, my car won't start, and after trying to call every family member that might help me trouble shoot it, and being advised by my loving brother that it might blow up, I settle on the AAA. Within 10 minutes, the guy is there, I am jumped, and headed East. Didn't matter I was late, because even after stopping at the slowest McDonald's this side of the buggy delivery boy, they still weren't ready to pack up and go when I got there. No worries in the end, because traffic was light, and my Spartans weren't on the TV anyhow. We listened on the radio during a 1 hour storm delay and then while they struggled to beat Western Michigan. It's going to be another tough season to sell.

On the drive out to DC, I was playing this new game I got hooked on. A year ago, I saw this movie on YouTube highlighting train safety. 

 

About a month ago, my wife's cousin posted on her Facebook about how she was wasting the day away playing "Dumb Ways to Die" on her iPhone but I hadn't had time to chase it down. Sure enough, it is a true-to-the-video game that requires only patience and a slow day. My slow day opportunity was on the drive to DC, and the game did not disappoint. Very simple, very easy, mildly entertaining.

The home screen for my new game. When you win, new characters debark the train.

Now to the main body of work, our trip to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum at Dulles. This isn't my first time there - we were put up for an evening there back in 2009 with National 4-H Conference - but I unbelievably didn't take any pictures of substance from that trip. I was super excited to spend more than an hour or two there and really take all the time I wanted appreciating the magnitude of aerospace history collected into one place. And while we were there, we got to see my father-in-law's name on the foils out front; the inscription just got finished.

View out the front doors of the museum with the supporters' foils.

There is really only one huge draw for me in the whole building, and that is the centerpiece SR-71 Blackbird. Back in the good old 90's, communism's darker evils still lurked after the wall fell and bad people seemed to be springing up all over that part of the world in positions of power. Meanwhile, my dad worked at an airplane manufacturing company and brought home these quarterly reports on VHS (if you don't know what that is, stop reading this blog) with demos of aviation awesomeness that we would watch and re-watch before they'd be reallocated to the National Geographic or Nova recording stack since we couldn't stay up late enough to watch those shows. In this time, I had a lot of security and faith for protection in my family, my God, and the U.S. Government with their omnipotent technology (since then, only one of those three has changed).

No plane every stood out to me as more awe-inspiring than the Blackbird. My older brother would tell me just how fast it was, before he'd make these swooshing sounds and run his model all over the house. He was right, my Blackbird would never be as fast as his, but that was because I wasn't as old. I would ask him what the point was in the plane because it didn't carry any missiles (and his were always shooting mine down), but he would tell me how it was a spy plane, so fast that nobody could see it coming. The plane symbolized the authority and superiority of the United States to the world in my eyes, and to see one in person is a wonderful thing. I could sit and just look at the plane for hours. It is so huge, fast, strong and dark, like the Batmobile in all its glory.

View of the SR-71 when you enter the museum.

Front profile of the Blackbird from the main floor.

View of the rear of the plane from the ground.

View of the plane from above. Look at the people in comparison.

Now, mind you, there are other great things to see in the museum as well. For example, the space shuttle Discovery, burned and bruised from atmospheric re-entries and ozone-ending take-offs, is housed back in the rightly named space wing. To think that the program is cancelled is sad. I know that the budget made sense and that private markets will pick up the slack. But space was the dream of every kid I knew, and I wonder what our future generations will dream of now that the U.S. doesn't believe in space anymore.

You can see how worn out much of the protection is from years of use.

So the question is who will carry on the legacy in the gap left open.

Fighter plane from WWII.

This plane was from our hometown.

This is the tactical fighter of the future, so different from the days of the Wright Brothers.

We were graced by an eloquent presentation by a gentleman on the Enola Gay, the modifications they made for it to haul the A-bomb, the practice runs they had to do in order to be accurate enough to make the hit, and all about the Manhattan Project. After about 30 minutes, we couldn't take any more info from him. My brainache reminded me of leaving orgo chem, like a sponge just seeping back out, filled to the max.

A wavy panorama of the view from the museum control tower.

This airplane does exist (2 of them! since the 60s!) I thought it was just a movie thing.

Left: First presidential helocopter (Eisenhower). Right: First female solo helocopter around the world.

First around the world flight by helocopter.

Failed attempt at a car plane.

Oldschool FedEx logo on a plane.

Dani and Hannah in Arlington.

And then we went out for dinner in Arlington to meet up with an old friend/roommate from college. It was her first time seeing little Hannah, so there is a mandatory picture of her holding Hannah in a great Italian restaurant that is brand new and right by the Metro. Seeing this picture when I loaded it back up for the blog reminds me of just how much time has changed over the years. Now we're all big kids, pursuing career paths (notice I didn't classify myself as having a "big kid job"). Back in the day when life's only priorities were to drink out the freezer stash when we moved, or get home in time to wake up for tailgating at a proper hour, or how far we would have to walk in the ice before lunch on campus - those were some good times. But these are pretty good times now, and each have their place in life. People ask me how much culture shock it was to have a baby at our age, but I'm pretty happy where I'm at now, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

And then we went on a little mall excursion to see some of the monuments. Again, I will let the pictures speak for themselves and try to keep my conversation and ramblings short.

Scaffolding on the Washington Monument. Hopefully Congress will find it in their hearts to keep funding this.

MLK Memorial remade with the one quote removed.

One of the greatest presidents ever, Abraham Lincoln.

View out on the mall from the Lincoln Memorial. Think about how many changes this has seen over the years.

Amateur hour with my finger over the iPhone lens.

Part of the Vietnam Memorial.

You should learn something new every time you go somewhere, and this time my new fact was about this little house on the corner of the mall. This was part of the old locks intended for commercial transport near the Capitol, as a source of revenue for the Capitol. However, by the time they were finished, they were never quite that useful and were replaced by other stuff. This building is the old lockkeeper's house for the person who was in charge of monitoring the locks when they were in operation.

DAR House for our little daughter of the American Revolution.

We parked on a sidestreet near the mall and I have to say it was a great decision. Free parking on Sunday, low traffic post-March, and coincidentally near the Daughters of the American Revolution house, which our little girl will someday benefit from. Back a couple years ago, my Grandpa's niece started digging around on Ancestry.com and we all made fun of her. She found us linked to Charlemagne, pirates, German and French nobility, 3 saints, many outlaws and many others. Most of it was probably a bunch of horsecrap (I know the saints part is), especially as the farther you go back, more and more lines will converge with decreasingly convincing proofs and records. However, when she found that our family was related three of the people who fired on the British at Lexington, I was actually a little bit proud. Turns out that my compulsive, rebellious nature is gotten honest and highly heritable for about 400 years. So now my little girl is able to registered as a Daughter of the American Revolution, and linked forever to a more noble time in our country's history.

My last thought for you from the vacation is about getting off the beaten path when on a vacation. Too often we find ourselves trapped in the expectations of those more or less relaxed people who went before us, pressured into seeing "the sights" and less open to the flexibility that a vacation should have. Well, my wife is queen of scheduling flexibility and she dug up a good stop this time around, completely off the main places.

We visited the Surratt Tavern, which is closely linked to the conspiracy to kidnap Abraham Lincoln and ransom him for confederate prisoners. This attempt being failed, the plot thickened with what was ultimately the assassination which led to the death of Surratt and her son, as well as most of the rest of the crew. Lincoln being such a famous guy, there are actually quite a few places associated with the conspiracy on the South side of the District of Columbia, all famous for their own reasons. But the tavern was well restored, and we were regaled for near an hour by a costumed interpreter for a grand total of $3 per person. Beautiful, old furniture and intriguing backstory on the people involved in the assassination. I would say it was equally as good as visiting Ford's Theater, better tour, less museum, but less crowd and more relaxing.

My wife and our daughter waiting to enter the historic tavern building.

Still an important highway crossroads today.

The Surratt tavern, restored to its historic appearance.