A Air Show
Greetings to all.
This weekend, the Guard base where Rebecca works her other job, held an air show, the first since July 2014. She invited us up.
After a two hour drive through massive highway remodeling (i.e., road construction), we arrived in Cheyenne. Trolling the parking lot of the nearby mall, we found a place to park not to far from the pickup point where buses awaited to ferry us onto the base.
Rebecca met us where the bus dropped us off and led us through the security line, which started in the welcome shade and relative cool of a small hangar.
In the hangar, after security, they had a glider for the kids to examine. We waited in line for a photo of Xavier inside.
He was a little timid at first, concerned once the canopy locked into place, he would get trapped inside. That did not happen, of course. We got a nice shot and headed out to find lunch with mom.
Of course, the lunch Xavier wanted was the longest line to be seen at all the food vendors: the Papa John's Pizza truck. We stood in line fifteen minutes on the tarmac and in the beating sun. When we were third next to order, they announced they were out of pizza and drinks, but would have more in about twenty minutes.
Off to a hot dog stand we went, one with no line. We ate lunch with Rebecca, then she left us to the air show. She had a meeting to make.
Xavier and I toured some of the aircraft on the ground. The helicopter interested Xavier the most. Apart from what the photo shows, he was not terrified of being in the cockpit; it's just him forcing a goofy "smile."
We watched much of the air show, which began with a parachute jump. Xavier found little interest in the acrobatics of the planes, so we toured more of the grounded planes, including the two C-130s.
We found a booth where they sold C-130 hats. Kids all over the tarmac wore them and Xavier wanted one. It quickly became his favorite part of the air show.
After a break for a refreshing snow-cone, we discovered a B-17 at the far right end of the flight line. Xavier has been obsessed with B-52s this past month (why is still a mystery, but it may have to do with the newest mod we added to his Minecraft installation).
We looked at all the guns and gun positions on the Flight Fortress, a plane much, much smaller in person than I ever imagined. After that, we got in line and waited to climb into the plane and walk it from flight deck to rear exit.
For Xavier, that was not too difficult. For dad, walking and squeezing through the innards of the plane proved another story entirely.
After getting out of the B-17, Xavier had to examine all the outside items again, including the bomb doors and the replica bombs stacked up inside. (You saw the bombs in the plane as you made your way past the them to the middle of the plane)
Now, the contest between the blue C-130 hat and the B-17 began. Which one would win as Xavier's favorite: the hat or the B-17.
Likely the hat as he brought it home, but could not fly the B-17 home, though he asked questions of how long it would take to fly it from Wyoming to home. I think he did not want to endure the two hour car ride home.