I've officially got one day to plan as my own on this trip. That's Monday, and we're going to see a Mariners game that night. These first two days were doing mutual touristy stuff in and around the city. Today she suggested we go to the Museum of flight.
I was in hog heaven.
They have a space exhibit currently. It starts with Goddard (who went to WPI) and ends with the international space station.
They have a Gemini capsule.
They have simulators where you can practice landing the the LEM on the moon, or landing the Space Shuttle, or even using an EVA suit to get yourself over to the Hubble telescope for repairs and adjustments (I got the quickest time today on that one. Just sayin'.) They have stuff you can actually do.
They give a pretty good history of spaceflight too. I learned some stuff about the Soviet space program that I never knew. They really showed that much of both of our programs was due to the fact that we hustled those German rocket scientists out of Nazi Germany at the end of WWII.
And you have to love this:
No, that's not a Star Trek uniform. That is Carl Sagan's turtleneck!!!!!! Yes, the great man's moth-eaten turtleneck (you can see the holes) is in a glass case at the Museum of Flight. Now an old turtleneck isn't such a big deal, but the thought that some museum curator thought that Carl Sagan was such a boon to the space program (and he was) that his turtleneck should be enshrined just brought a smile to my face. They also have his dictaphone, and the card read that he had dictated millions and millions of words into it.
That's a museum with a sense of humor.
We lunched on a patio where we could watch planes and jets take off and land at the Boeing field. That really gave us a sense that the history of aviation was ongoing. Really a great place.
Then onto the World War II exhibit.
They have a Spitfire.
And a bunch of other planes that were not built by Boeing, which is again, really cool. I expected it to be a Boeing propaganda film, but just about every major fighter plane of the war was represented. I only put the Spitfire here because that is the damn coolest looking plane ever. I never realized the guns protruded as far as they do.
By the way, I'm only posting and commenting on a few pictures that I take every day. If you want to see all the pictures I take, though without any labels or context, you can head on over to my photo albums.
Outside the building they have a Concorde, the discontinued supersonic jet, and the original Air Force One (that saw service from Kennedy to Nixon). It's not the first presidential plane, just the first one that was called AFO.
Did you know that Jackie O. originally designed the color scheme on the outside? It was later changed by Jimmy Carter, and that's the design that's on this one.
We went through it and as we were coming down the exit stairs Elizabeth took my picture (I meant to do my Gerald Ford imitation and trip, but it was actually pretty steep and I could've hurt myself). The curator guy saw her, and came running down the steps to take our picture together.
I'd post that picture, but it's on Elizabeth's camera and she hasn't bothered to upload any pictures or contribute to this thing in any way.
This guy didn't just take the picture, he started fiddling with the settings on Elizabeth's camera. I thought he was dead for sure, because if Elizabeth tells me to take a picture, I point it at the thing I'm supposed to take a picture of and press the button. If I screw up her settings I'm a dead man.
He was not a dead man. He pointed out that she had the wrong settings for the lighting conditions and she agreed. Then he asked her about shooting RAW, and she answered. Then he ran up and got the Photoshop book he was reading while on duty, and together they started speaking a language of their own.
So she made a friend.
Why is she sneaky? Because she front-loaded my fun. She let me go nuts in a place I wanted to see, so during the next two days when we're trapped in icky nature, I'll keep my trap shut.
Very sneaky.
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