Politics, schmolitics. This was the part of the trip that I was most excited about. If medicine doesn't work out, I'd really like to become an astronaut.
I took a bus out to the Dulles airport, and I looked for the shuttle to the Udvar-Hazy center. It was already 3:00 by that point (my flight left at 5:30), and I was starting to get a little antsy. But skipping the museum was not an option, so I flagged down a cab.
We pulled up to the museum around 3:20. I paid the driver, and made a beeline to the entrance. Like all Smithsonian museums, this one is free. So after a quick bag check, I was up an running in the coolest museum ever conceived.
The Udvar-Hazy center grew out of an unused Dulles aircraft hanger that was used to store airplanes and spacecraft that were too big to fit in the Air and Space museum on the National Mall. It's gigantic. This is what you see when you walk into the building.
Excitement overload. I can count on one hand the amount of times that I've been as happy as I was when I took this photo.
And then you turn to your right and you see this: an SR-71 Blackbird. Nerd heaven.
Almost 40 years after it was created, it is still the fastest, and one of the most advanced airplanes ever built. And certainly one of the more bad-ass ones, too.
There's also a pretty amazing helicopter wing, featuring one of the infamous Hueys that will forever be associated with the Vietnam War.
And even the area dedicated only to aircraft engines is three times the size of my house.
One of the more sobering displays was this innocuous-looking chrome flyer.
Which you may recognize if I show you the other side.
I couldn't believe how many amazing stories were packed into the aircraft hanger. The Enola Gay, the first commercial passenger jet, and even an ultralight flyer used by police in Monterey Park.
There's cool, and then there's this:
It's an Air France Concorde, the first, only, and infamous supersonic passenger jet. These things cost over 20 million dollars, and one is just sitting there, free for all to explore.
But even the Concorde couldn't stand up to what I saw next: the space hangar.
It was literally jaw-dropping.
The centerpiece of the space hangar is of course the awesomely-named Enterprise. If you get the reference, I wouldn't brag too much about that. If you don't here's a hint:
This photo was taken during the dedication ceremony in 1976, and despite decades of awe-inspring imagery, this might just be the coolest photo that NASA has ever taken. A letter-writing campaign by Trekkies convinced President Ford to override NASA's original choice (Constitution) in favor of the name of Captain Kirk's ship.
The space shuttle is clearly the biggest draw of the space hangar, but there are plenty of other amazing artifacts chronicling the history of human spaceflight. My personal favorite is probably this only-in-the-60s Mobile Quarantine Facility. I could so easily live in this thing.
But back to reality. You may recall that my trip to the Udvar-Hazy Center was a tight squeeze. My flight was scheduled to leave at 5:30, and I didn't even arrive at the museum until 3:20. I did my best to move through the exhibits quickly, but my inner 13 year-old is very strong, and he did everything he could to make me read every single sign about every single airplane.
Around 4:15 I had made an acceptable pass through the museum, and had convinced 13 year-old Myles to leave by promising that we'd visit the museum again on our next D.C. visit. So I asked a security guard where the shuttle picked people up yet, and his first reaction was a facial expression that could only have meant, "what shuttle?" Then he seemed to realized that there was, in fact, a bus that occasionally came by the front of the building. But he cautioned me that the bus ran on a pretty unpredictable time table, as if I had a second option (although I did consider asking several museum visitors if they could give me a ride to the airport).
4:15 became 4:30, and 4:30 became 4:45. By 4:50, I could feel my blood pressure rising, and there was no bus in sight. But then, to my relief, a white and red minibus pulled up. I asked the driver if she was going to the airport (keep in mind that I had already nearly boarded two senior-citizen tour busses in the hope that they were the airport shuttle). But this was the one, and I paid the surprisingly low fare of $0.50. The driver waited around for a few minutes to see if any other passengers showed up, as if one of the other five people in the museum was also late for a flight. But perhaps after noticing my exploding neck veins, she put the bus in gear, and we headed towards the airport.
It was about 5:05 by the time that we pulled into the terminal, and I sprinted to the ticket line. Since Southwest doesn't have a huge presence at Dulles airport, there was no one else in line. The ticket agent gave me a boarding pass, but didn't really think that I had a prayer of making the flight. I have never missed a flight in my life, and the irony of missing my first one because I wanted to look at some airplanes was not lost on me.
But after pleading with security agents to let me into the express line, I was cleared quickly, and booked it to the gate. I don't think I've ever moved that quickly, and certainly not in dress shoes. I made it to the gate just as the last passengers were getting on the flight. In fact, one of the other conference attendees called out my name from behind me in line. We exchanged pleasantries, I explained away the profuse sweating, and we found ourselves some seats.
But just as I was patting myself on the back, the pilot came on the PA and casually mentioned that we had fuel dripping out of the right wing (and made sure to note that it was occurring at the rate of one drop every ten seconds). He said that it was probably a minor issue, and the mechanics were on their way. But, again, Southwest doesn't run a lot of flights out of Dulles, so the mechanics had to come from Baltimore.
After sitting on the plane for about an hour, I knew that I had already missed my connecting flight in Chicago. And I also knew that it was the last Chicago to Tucson flight, since I had already looked into contingency plans if I missed my outbound D.C. flight. So I knew that I would be spending a night somewhere besides my bed, and the only things left to figure out were where I was going to be sleeping, and how much it was going to cost me.
When they finally called off the flight (about two hours later), I got off the plane and called Southwest's 800 number. There was no way I was going to stand in line with 100 angry passengers that were harassing an already exhausted gate agent. But the Southwest phone agent couldn't do anything, because the flight hadn't technically been canceled yet, only indefinitely delayed. But the other conference attendee that I ran into in the boarding line had the good idea of going out past security and talking with the ticket agents in the front of the airport.
We got there just in time. Because this was the last Southwest flight out of Dulles, the agents were packing up to go, and didn't have any idea about the chaos going on at the gate. And since we were the only people that walked out of security, the ticket agents had all the time in the world to book us on flights the next day. They even gave us a meal voucher for a not-bad dinner in the airport restaurant.
The only problem was the hotel. We had already convinced Southwest to pay for our hotel rooms, but there were none available near the airport (our flight was not the only one that was canceled that day). So I asked them if I could get a Southwest credit in exchange for the cost of the hotel, and I would go out on my own and find one on my own (thinking that I would just go back into town and stay with my friend).
I would have taken a $100 credit, they offered $200, and I was as happy as a clam. And to sweeten the deal, I found a $60 hotel room on Hotwire that was only a few miles from the airport. Not a bad deal.
After just a few hours of sleep, I was back up and at the airport. Things went off without a hitch, and I only loved D.C. more because of the delay. I'll be back soon.
-M
