May 25, 2020

USAF Museum 2020



One small Reds Winter Caravan Tour Stop for man, one blogger in a space suit for Redsfankind.

When last we made the road trip to Dayton, Ohio for the Reds Winter Caravan tour stop at the USAF Museum we followed up the Reds event that morning with a walk through the museum in the afternoon.  Well, we walked through half of the museum.  Maybe half.  If you haven't visited recently, the museum is massive.  If you want to take your time walking through, reading all the information cards, studying aircraft, pondering the science, thrilling at the history, marveling at the courage, framing cool photographs, sitting down occasionally to rest your weary back and sore feet, and maybe have lunch and visit the gift shoppe then you should plan a full two-day visit.  This is all to say, upon our previous visit we missed half of the museum and on this trip we saw - just about - the other half of the museum. 

The museum is laid out in a chronological manner.  Last time we walked through the  galleries displaying hardware from more recent eras; exhibits featuring Cold War era aircraft, spacecraft and rockets, assorted examples of Air Force One and the missile silo.  For this second visit to the USAF Museum, following the conclusion of the Reds Winter Caravan event, we walked through the birth of flight, World War One, and WW2 galleries, including a somber temporary exhibit (on loan) educating museum visitors about the horrors of Jewish persecution in Germany and the NAZI concentration camps.

It won't surprise you to know that the Wright Brothers are prominently featured among the birth of flight exhibits.  On sheer size alone, one cannot miss this Orville Wright designed wind tunnel.




Honestly, I tried to fit the whole wind tunnel into frame but this was as much as I could manage while photographing at least one end.  Built in 1916, the wind tunnel is on loan to the USAF Museum from.....




Miami University!  What what?!  Say what?

Don't miss the Wright Cycle Company bicycle on display just inside the exhibit entrance.  Very cool!

Strap yourself in!  Rapid fire:




World War One era Fokker Triplane!  That's right, Fokker, I said Fokker!  Deal with it.  Lou can be seen at the bottom of the photo, probably reading up on that most famous of all WW1 triplane pilots Manfred von Richtofen aka the Red Baron.  His dying last word - after being shot down near Vaux-sur-Somme on April 21st, 1918 - has been widely reported by eyewitnesses as being "Kaputt."  Indeed.




Here are service medals for two of the better known WW1 battles.  This was part of a much larger display of WW1 medals and ribbons.




Sopwith Camel.  The preferred WW1 fighter plane of Snoopy.




The Museum has on display a multitude of aircraft engines.  This WW1 engine was designed/manufactured by a well-known car-maker of the period.

Moving onto the World War Two exhibits, the Axis Powers are represented as you would expect.




NAZI Enigma machine.




Imperial Japanese Mitsubishi Zero.




Among the countless things I learned that day was that the Wright Company was still in business and engineering/building aircraft engines in WW2.




US Army Air Corps Curtiss P-40 Warhawk painted with the sharkface made famous by the American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers.  At the start of WW2, the P-40 was the leading US fighter plane.  P-40s were among the few U.S. fighters that took to the air at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.  They saw combat in the Philippines in December of '41.  P-40's were used by the Flying Tigers in China in '41 and '42 and were deployed in North Africa in 1943.





The main attraction these days at the USAF Museum is the Memphis Belle B-17 Flying Fortress.   Do yourself a favor, set aside 40 minutes and watch the 1944 War Department documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.  Then go see the bomber at the USAF Museum.

On the subject of WW2 and modern warplanes, I have a bias in favor of bombers - "big birds" as USAF veteran Mr B has always referred to them.  Fittingly, at the exit of the WW2 hanger you'll find another significant aircraft, but one that has been largely forgotten.





The B-29 silverplate Superfortress Bockscar.  On August 9th, 1945 this bomber dropped the Fat Man nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.

Each year the Reds Winter Caravan is conducted in a hanger near the center of the museum complex, dedicated to the Vietnam era.  It's the one hanger that we haven't fully explored.  Maybe next year?

Roll the credits!

May 16, 2020

It's All Here On The Vinyl



Last summer Lou popped for tickets to see Rush Cinema Strangianto in the theater.  I sported my Test for Echo concert tour t-shirt.




One night only!  The house was full and the film was loud.  I mean LOUD.  No joke, about 15 minutes into the film and my right ear had gone numb.  Great film.  It should be loud.  Just, perchance, a little less deafening next time.

This past February 14, 2020 marked - are you sitting down? - the fiftieth anniversary of the greatest-ever, recorded for eventual album release rock concert: The Who Live at Leeds.  When I sent a text message notification regarding this historic observance to Lou and his family, it spurred a conversation about my having this album on vinyl. I replied to them that I had multiple copies on vinyl (and cassette tape, and compact disc) and that, so I thought at the time, one copy that was pressed on red vinyl.




Here is the photo I texted back of my 3 vinyl copies of Live at Leeds.  The album at left is the 1980's re-issue I had back in high school.  It's also the album I've listened to more than any other in my life.  The other two copies are later variants of collector limited-editions.

Live at Leeds is not simply the greatest live album of all-time, it's the best album of all-time and you don't have to take just my word on the subject.  Read this.

Alas, I do not have a red vinyl copy of Live at Leeds.

I do, however, have an original 1978 red vinyl Canadian-market copy of the Who Are You album.





Roll the credits!

May 8, 2020

Cruising Under Your Radar 2018

Here is an assortment of random photos from 2018;




HA sells sanctuary, and here's where.  The sun-dappled backyard with forest beyond.  June, 2018.




Random sighting of a Ferrari 308 in July, in keeping with my daily pandemic lockdown Magnum P.I. marathons.




Military maneuvers.




Misfired selfie at the Chocolate exhibit, Cincinnati Museum Center.  Promotional considerations provided by the Cincinnati Reds.




Alumni Weekend.  Overturned SUV.  #nbd




Working late at HQ, reflected in laptop monitor.




One afternoon the office at HQ morphed into a film noir set.  The Googs defines film noir as "a style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace."  Pessimism, fatalism, and menace?  Yep, that sounds like a day at the office.

Those who think that the saxophone is the iconic sound of a film noir soundtrack are not simply sadly mistaken, they are are wildly wrong.  It is the trumpet.  Miles Davis makes the inarguable case in Ascenseur pour l'echafaud (1958).






Sheldon "Chief" Bender was a long-time scout for the Cincinnati Reds.




Autumn at The Ranch, leafy driveway.




Reily Elementary, primary grades hallway.




Waiting room selfie bank shot.




Northgate Mall Sears store.  Fini.




This served some hilarious purpose that I've long-since forgotten.




Preach it, brother!  Interchangeable drill bits.

Roll the credits!

May 7, 2020

Merry Rushmas!



In recent years my nieces have gifted me a variety of Rush-branded gear for birthdays and Christmas'.  They know I'm a big time Rush fan.  They know their Dad is a Rushophile.  My nieces have seen the prog rock light and now, yes, they too are fans of the Canadian power trio.  Rush is an irresistible force!

For Xmas 2019 I went straight to the source, Rush.com, and gave my credit card a serious workout.  Among the gift-giving items in my virtual cart were the two "star man" t-shirts you see at right in the photo above, modeled by gift recipients Maria and Lou, and the t-shirt you see stretched across my broad shoulders.  Lou's shirt is a replica 1977 North American Tour (for the A Farewell to Kings album) concert t-shirt.  Maria's shirt is a colorful and distressed variant of the famous 2112 album "star man" artwork.  My shirt is a replica 1984 Grace Under Pressure concert t-shirt.  Anna already owns a Rush t-shirt but at the time of Christmas her shirt was away at college.  For the team photo above I loaned her my authentic 1996 Test for Echo concert t-shirt.

All of us were shocked and deeply saddened by the sudden and tragic passing of Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart just two weeks later due to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Over the holidays my nieces found funny my old school carousel 5-cd changer.  Here it is loaded for our annual Xmas Eve gathering.




The A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack with bonus extended-version tracks and a whole lot of Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis, Jr.   My Xmas music is too cool for you squares.  Know this, ye merry gentlemen: Christmas at The Ranch swings!

When putting away my artificial tree following Christmas 2017 it began to break apart.  Up until the early 1980s we always had live trees.  But you know the problems: uneven, unbalanced, trying to keep them sufficiently watered and.... spiders.  Since then, the magnificent artificial tree we purchased during the first term of the Reagan Administration survived for decades.  Far beyond it's warranty.  In the fall of 2018 I scoured every commercial outlet selling artificial trees, searching for just the right tree.  I must have examined 75 trees.  Some good, some bad, more than a few atrocious.  One tree distinguished itself on the strength of its multi-function lights, replete with dozens of settings, speeds and patterns.  The light show, quite simply, is amazing.  Mesmerizing.

On New Year's Day 2019, I dialed up a static TARDIS blue for the Doctor Who New Year's Day special on BBC America.




Stunning!

Fast forward 12 months and for the Xmas 2019 photo session of my decorative handiwork I dialed-in the alternating red-and-green lights.




The traditional Christmas holiday colors cast a pleasing illumination for the Christmas Village underneath.






Most of these decorations date back to the 1960s.  The white truck you see near the lower right of the photo immediately above, driven by Jolly Old Saint Nick and laden with Christmas toys for the good little boys and girls of Christmastown, was a Christmas gift from my grandparents to My Dear Elderly Mother on the occasion of her very first Xmas.  From the Hoover Administration, peeps!

Anticipating a long labor-intensive day hosting Xmas Eve at The Ranch, I treated My Dear Elderly Mother to a Christmas Eve Eve dinner at the Hueston Woods Lodge.  Credit to the Lodge staff for their exemplary achievements in decorating the facility.













Festive!

The next morning, Christmas Eve, Lou was out and about finalizing his naughty-or-nice list and periodically sent to his immediate and extended family a collection of foggy photos from the countryside to which I added Bob Ross-inspired evergreen trees (festooned with red Xmas ornaments) and happy little clouds;






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