I’ll be hopping aboard Virgin America’s flight from SFO to Dulles in a few hours. Virgin’s the best airline in America so far as I’m concerned; it’s got Apple Computer-level quality control and attention to user-friendliness, and the overall design makes it feel like a nightclub in the sky. Put it this way: you order food at any time during the flight from the seatback touchscreen and they deliver it within minutes.
Sadly, I’ll be going from our comfortable 80-degree dry heat here in the East San Francisco Bay Area to a 115-degree swamp with oppressive humidity I’ve not felt since I lived in Maryland as a kid. I’m already getting flashbacks….
My traveling companion’s from Mumbai and occasionally mutters that Americans know nothing about stifling heat. I think he may be in for a surprise.
I’d planned on not venturing out of the convention’s air-conditioned hotel until after dark to go see the lighted monuments on Capitol Mall, but even that might not be comfortable now.
Plus, I can’t bring a firearm, can’t bring any knives, can’t even bring a multitool. Not fun.
We’ll have several hours to kill on Friday afternoon while we wait for our flight home. Aside from watching the panic ensue should the debt-ceiling increase not occur, I figure we might check out the Dulles hangar wing of the National Air & Space museum. Looks pretty awesome. Seeing the only Enterprise that’s actually flown would be pretty cool for this Trekker.
Look like scale models, don’t they? But they ain’t.
Been to Udvar-Hazy a couple of times. Magnificent! Oh, and the big silver bird in the center of the picture is the Enola Gay.
The Virgin America inflight entertainment system is the best I’ve encountered.
Does the Dulles hangar actually have the SR-71 rocket sled, or has my reality again been skewed by Hollywood?
Um, that Enterprise hasn’t flown, either. It was a training prototype constructed for the space program, not a functional orbiter. It was never even supplied with engines.
…Come to think of it, the only time that particular Enterprise has “flown” was when it was piggybacking on the back of a modified 747 for both aero tests and delivery.