One of the gifts we gave to Victor for his birthday was a set of tree identification cards, and we had fun at the beach going through them and quizzing ourselves and each other. I thought of those today when we visited the Udvar Hazy location of the National Air and Space Museum.
The place has been open out near Dulles Airport since 2003, but I had never been, despite the draw of Space Shuttle Discovery and an Air France Concorde. And, in fact, those two crafts were my only must see exhibits when we arrived after the 30-minute drive.
We started in the section of the hangar with military aircraft, but they quickly became a bit overwhelming and tedious. I liked seeing some of the planes I'd heard of: fighter jets and helicopters I knew from movies, a Blue Angel jet, the record-setting Blackbird, but the sheer firepower made me a little sad.
In the end, it was the commercial airliners that made my day. At lunch, I told Victor and Treat how when we were kids, we used to be able to identify almost all the planes at the airport by make and model. Such knowledge only made sense for an airline family, but we were kind of nerds about it; geeking out with our other airline friends whenever the clock turned 10:11 or 7:47.
Shortly after that conversation, we found a display case of models of vintage commercial airliners, and I demonstrated my knowledge by correctly naming most of them. Right before we left, we went up to the museum's observation tower, and I found it unexpectedly thrilling to watch the planes landing on the two runways at Dulles as we listened to the live chatter from Air Traffic Control and the cockpits.
Although I scanned the livery to name the airline as soon as possible, I was stumped by the type of plane, and a set of fancy flashcards would have been just right.
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