God Bless The USAF!

Good Evening and welcome to another episode of this crazy adventure!

We left Wapakoneta, OH this morning at around 9.30AM which is, for those who know me well, early in the morning for me! Oh well, must be something that goes back t MY Air Force days when I had to go to work at 5AM and begged the alarm to let me sleep another extra 5 minutes. So now I really like to sleep in if and when I can.

Our first stop today has been, contrary to what I said last night, the United States Air Force National Museum, we decided this morning to skip the Neil Armstrong Museum, mainly because we had already seen some memorabilia at the local McDonald’s on exit 111 where we spent the night. You should see this place (McDonald’s), the ladies taking your order are NOT your average McDonald’s people. What do I mean by that? It’s quite simple, it seemed like they just got out from one of those 70’s TV shows with the lady serving coffee at a diner…! Got the picture? I hope so…! One other I couldn’t help but noticed both this morning and last night in Wapakoneta, OH is the total absence of black people, where did they go?!?!

We got to the USAF National Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB after about one hour from when we said goodbye to the nice lady at the McDonald’s. This is one of the other places worth a visit, especially if you’re into aircrafts or American/World history.

The museum is also for FREE, that’s right, there’s no admission fee, which is nowadays, with the price of gas skyrocketing like this, certainly a good thing. The exhibition floor is divided into three gigantic hangars, subdivided into 6 different areas each of them with a specific theme.

The cold war section is very interesting, because of all the most recognizable planes (at least for me), and for all the precious information on espionage, etc., very interesting indeed.

Among the aircrafts I enjoyed looking at the most are the one the dropped the bomb on Nagasaki (because of what it symbolizes), the brand new F-22 Raptor, the evergreen F-177 Stealth Nighthawk, and the massive B-2. All is documented through pictures, that you can see on Flickr at this web address: www.flickr.com/nikkosan

It took us about 4 hours to go through the whole exhibition, so I figured we had our share of walking and exercising for the day, something that should take care of our “body shape” at least for the day; speaking of which, I almost forgot to mention that we did try some of that Astronauts’ food that they sell at the gift shop. It is sold to be authentic, and I missed the chance to try it three years ago when I went to Houston, TX to the NASA Space Center, so now I did, and it was good!

We finally got back in the car and drove another 100 miles to Indianapolis, so yes, that adds another state to our “collection”. Here later this evening we met our friend Jerry from Fort Lauderdale, who has lived in this state for a long time. He gave us a very interesting tour of the city, and I got the chance to take some pictures of the city at sunset, which is always good.

We went to an amazingly good Brazilian Churrascaria (Steakhouse) this evening, same thing as the one we visited in Atlanta with our friend Todd. A lot of meat (any kind), and impeccable service, which makes me feel like I can recommend “Fogo de Chao” here on the blog.

We’re now back at the hotel, as we get ready for tomorrow.

I’m thrilled about going to visit “The Brickyard” and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall Of Fame and Museum, I hope to be able to walk on those bricks and kiss the ground.

We’re also aiming on visiting the NCAA Hall Of Fame, and pay tribute to all the Students/Athlete, hopefully we’re going to be able to do both and still manage to be in time for our next stop which is supposed to be the “Windy City”, Chicago, IL.

From Indianapolis it’s all for tonight.

Stay tuned, we keep on “trucking”,
Nico