Kicking it Off

Kaylee went to head for Ohio yesterday, and her Explorer wouldn’t start. Steve helped her get it started, but it’s a bad connection to the battery. So she had to take my car. Fortunately it was there! So she departed on her first solo long cross-country, about 2.5 hours away. She texted us when she arrived, and she made it safely and said it went fine. I’m placing bets that she wants to start going on road trips now. I did. I found driving very free-ing as a teenager, and I’d be very surprised if she doesn’t as well.

Yesterday was the first full day here at OSH, and we all scattered to the winds and hit all sorts of stuff. Steve and I were dropped off at the pedestrian gate and walked all the way around through vintage, homebuilts, warbirds, through building A, back through the Light Sport areas, into the Fly Market, had lunch back at Vintage. I was hugged by three people we ran into. We saw Doc (B29) and the B-1, I ran into Doug R the other day, and Bill S from Tuskegee Airmen, I bought two 2018 Oshkosh t-shirts and picked up two free “Women in Aviation” shirts, because this year they’re red and I like red, even though this year I’m not going to be in the annual photo. Kaylee’s not here, and I feel no need to go. But I’ll take the free shirt, for her and maybe for me, though I never wear mine from other years. ;)

Last night I went to the US debut of the documentary “Spitfire”. They had interviews of former RAF Spitfire pilots, both men and women, and actual historical footage and photos of most of them. A lot of time and effort went into creating it. They used no CGI, but only real Spitfires, and the footage was beautifully done. The sound of a Spitfire will make your blood hum too. A couple neat things from it. The 90-some year old men were telling stories, and the videographer would zoom in on their ancient hands, which were doing what pilots do, and making flying motions with their hands. It was a neat visual. The women ferry pilots were called “ATA”, and in Britain they were honored and popular. Unlike the US, those ladies were celebrated, the guys in the military wanted to talk to them, they had “lots of boyfriends”, and their country supported them. There is still at least one alive today that they interviewed. She’s 100 years old, and she had ferried 1000 airplanes during the war, 400 of them being Spitfires. On a whim, she signed her name on only one of them, on a romantic notion that a cute RAF pilot would look her up, which she said never happened. But as it so happens, that airplane survived the war, and a man currently flies it today, and he looked her up and flew the plane to her, and had her sign the baggage door again from today. When he flew away in the plane, they did a close-up of her face/eyes, and I can’t really describe what was there, but you can feel it. Wistful, longing, pride, strength, sadness, wisdom. She knew it would be the last time she’d see one like that. A lot of history in there. I’m not a huge documentary person in general, that’s more Steve’s style, but this one was worth your time. I went alone to it, nobody else wanted to go, but I didn’t mind sitting there with free popcorn and a bottle of water and watching the sunset by an 80’ inflatable screen filled with screaming Spitfires. There are many worse ways to spend an evening. ;)

I walked over 12,000 steps yesterday, including home from the movie. If only I hadn’t eaten 15,000 steps worth of food yesterday too. ;)