Free breakfast and not just a croissant or a donut but a buffet!  I ate a breakfast burrito, caught up on my posts and drank enough coffee to keep me awake.  I had a lot to do today.

First up, the visit to an open air museum.  Now, they did a good job of hiding it.  It was fenced off and every road I took to it didn’t actually get to it.  However, I found an access road off of the main airport and that lead to my location.

As soon as I marched towards the hangars, someone popped out of a trailer parked next to them.  An older guy.  Not sure what else to do, I waved and he kept coming towards me, not waving back.  Hmmm, I wondered, am I where I’m not supposed to be.

But I was.  Turned out this was the tour guide.  His name was Jim.  He was engineer/mechanic, USAF, retired.  He told me he usually took people on a tour and I thought, ah what the hell, let’s see what he has to say.

Now old Jim knew his shit, no question but compared to crew chief Tom back in Palm Springs, this guy wasn’t all that friendly, which kinda begs the question, why would he think being a tourguide was a good idea.

He took me into the small add-on to the hangar and showed me all the news clippings of planes he’d worked on, showed me photos of all the planes he’d worked on and showed me all the models he’d built.  The highlight of his career was working on the X-32 JSF by Boeing.

But it became clear that he was like a taped tour, he just didn’t go off script and when I’d bug him about something, he would blink a few times then it was 50/50 if he would answer the question or just continue with his monologue.  Unlike Tom, when I told him my dad was a mechanic with the RAF, old Jim didn’t give a shit.

However, I’m fine with someone like that so I let him talk, asked a few questions here and there and we were fine.

Then, sadly for poor old Jim, a family with kids showed up.