DaughterGeeding contacted me yesterday to inform me she has also tested positive for COVID. I’m sure her mother will test positive in a few days. My daughter also told me her mother was out shopping. If we were still a couple, I would have advised her against going out in public since everyone else in the household is infected, but then again, she would consider that controlling.
For our trip, we flew into Reagan National. but were flying out of Dulles. It was the best fare I could find. Since we landed after midnight, all the car rental agencies would be closed at Reagan. So, since we would leave from Dulles, I decided to rent a car at Dulles and took an Uber to get there. It would have been much easier if we departed from Reagan National, since it was closer to our hotel and not a half-hour away. I would have rather rented a car from there. So, I thought it was funny that our return flight out of Dulles got cancelled and American Airlines taxied us back to Reagan National for a newly scheduled flight. I’m not sure why I didn’t receive a text alert about the flight cancellation.
Since we were near Dulles, I thought we should take advantage of what’s nearby, which was the Smithsonian Air and Space hanger were we got to see two of my favorite pieces of engineering, the SR-71 Blackbird and the Space Shuttle.
It just dawned on me that the last four places I took the kids, the meteor impact crater in Arizona, the observatory at Northern Arizona University, the Grand Canyon, and the Air and Space Museum, are all nerdy educational things. I hope that doesn’t hurt my factor as a cool dad.
In case you ever wanted to see how fragile and exposed those styrofoam thermal panels are which doomed one shuttle, here you go. Click to biggify.
Here’s an up-close image of a space suit. You’ll notice the instrumentation letters and numbers are backwards are reversed, and that’s done so they can be read easier from the astronaut’s perspective..
I took this photo because it made me think of a story my father told me. His military career started in the Navy. One of his first jobs was to put on propellers. But it wasn’t as easy as you’d think, because you had to calibrate the spinning so that the machine gun would shoot between spins and wouldn’t shoot off the flying mechanism. From that day, I always tried to look at things from stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily think about. I always enjoyed telling my ex stuff like that because she never had the honor of meeting my father and it was important for me to let her know the kind of man that he was and the life that he lived. I always wondered if she was truly interested in him or was just being polite, it was hard to tell. Now, I have to have the paradigm shift that she’s no longer worthy. At least I can let my kids know the man their grandfather was. As they sing in Hamilton, “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” I wonder what, if any, stories my children will tell others about me. You are only truly forgotten when someone says your name for the last time.
When I saw this, I automatically started to think about legendary football games. My kids’ first thoughts were of Duff Man.
I scheduled a walking tour of Arlington National Cemetary for mid-afternoon that Monday. My plan for us was to arrive an hour early. But that didn’t work out because the state police closed off the main entrance. I pulled to the side of the road and several others who booked the tour also arrived via Uber. But none of us were getting inside, or could meet at our rendezvous point. We ended up parking at the Pentagon (that just feels odd to type) and walking over only to be 90-minutes late. Thankfully, we received a refund. And, I’m grateful the kids got to see the two most important things at the cemetery, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown and JFK’s grave.
Per my tracking device, I took over 21,000 steps that day. That’s a whole lot for me.
The kids never experienced room service before, so that was our dinner plans and they thought it was the neatest thing. Of course, the Ritz does a great job of presentation.
