I can't believe it's taken me all weekend to blog about this. Gabriel and I took a historic ride on a B-24 Liberator, a WWII bomber airplane, on Saturday!
Just so he didn't think this was a joy ride, I insisted he do a little reading and write a short report on the B-24, and its importance to WWII. He learned a little about the famous May 1944 Ploesti raid, in which B-24s with their longer-range and higher bomb load capacity than the B-17s, bombed this strategically important oil refinery in Romania, important to the German war machine. Unfortunately, they didn't do nearly enough harm to slow down oil production, and many B-24s, and crews of 10, were lost.
More recently, the B-24 was central in the newly famous story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic hopeful in track who flew as navigator on B-24s, as made known by the book Unbroken - a WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand of Seabiscuit fame. While B-24s factored in heavily to the story, unfortunately what I took out of it was the brutal horrific inhumane treatment of POWs by the Japanese, to whom the Geneva Convention meant nothing and capture was viewed as disgrace -- you were way better off being captured by Germans.
Last year when I flew on the B-24, the volunteers who are running the Wings of Freedom Tour said they'd just met Louis Zamperini, now in his 90s, while in San Diego a few weeks back. WHOOOOA.
Our rides are always light-hearted joy rides, though I try to stay aware of what the actual airmen had to endure in the 1940s. I don't expect a 10yo to truly get it, but someday he'll be glad he had to learn a little bit about what these planes actually did in one of the most horrific and destructive conflicts in history.
Gabriel and I at the back of the B-24.
Gabriel in front of the aircraft, dubbed "Witchcraft."
The whole thing. Such a striking view. While we waited for some late passengers, who were ultimately too late to board, we got to see the B-17 take off -- now that was a treat!
The B-24's tail fins are really distinctive.
We're on! Gabriel sat in the tiny scrunchy radioman's chair, always reserved for the smallest passenger. I sat there last year, it is NOT comfortable.
Having done this before, I know the drill: the moment the flight engineer gives us the unbuckle signal, I let loose immediately and crawl down to the best view in the house: the nose. If you're more than 2 feet apart, it's almost impossible to talk, so I had to do a lot of tapping Gabriel and pointing to him where to go. Don't waste a second here -- go straight for the nose, the best seat in the house!
It's difficult to explain how intense it is to be in the nose -- full panoramic view, extremely windy and noisy. Nothing like it in the world. You're well below and under the pilots too -- you really are at the absolute front of the plane. But imagine being shot at from here?!
Someone else gets a turn, but we still get to see the area just below the nose, I think where the navigator did his thing.
Then it's hands-and-knees crawling to get back to the cockpit area, and to the back of the plane. First, you have to cross the bomb bay catwalk. It's long and narrow, and the crew likes to freak us out a little by taxiing with the bomb bay doors open. Not that the bomb bay doors would do much to hold you if you fell into them -- this plane is designed for dropping bombs, not keeping clumsy airmen in. Maybe that's why we taxi this way, to underscore the point of just how long and how narrow and how minimal that catwalk is!
I can always count on Gabriel not to be freaked out -- and walking this 20' narrow bomb bay, doors closed or not, is pretty freaky.
Now we were in the back of the plane, which is almost more fun because the windows are wide open, with the machine guns sticking out.
Gabriel tried to shoot down a commercial aircraft with a clear con trail to project its path, but it was out of range. In truth, while having half your crew devoted to defensive weapons on these planes, they couldn't do much by themselves against the capable Luftwaffe or anti-aircraft groundfire.
Offensive strategy or not, it was still a fantastic view. And with the rear windows open, a really windy one!
We flew close to the coast, where the land came up much closer to the airplane. Great views of local mountain trails, and cool views of the plane's shadow, which Gabriel was very excited about.
(I need to do some studying of local topography and figure out where exactly we were! Or go back to Moffett and ask the pilots :) )
Fun was over too fast -- two bells meant "We're landing, take your 'seats'." It's really a stretch to call them seats -- a clear area on the ground that includes an ancient belt that we can't possibly adjust to our size even it'd do any good at all anyway. But, OK, if it makes them feel better.
We sat in the waist hatch to land, instead of up-front. The ball turret was behind us, which meant a lot of wind directed around it -- these planes aren't sealed against air leakage, let alone pressurized, so you live with what you get!
We disembarked quickly, as we'd been told they'd do a "hot-load" -- putting new passengers on the plane without shutting the engines down, but some warning light caused them to shut the engines down (and, we think, cut out flight short by a few minutes). As soon as we landed, ladders came out and the guys started checking out the B-24 engine. Glad we were on the first flight, 'cause that group of would-be B-24 riders looks pretty bummed!
But that meant the chance for a few more photos with the plane.
Gabriel dead-center on the B-24 after landing, just under the nose area that is SO exciting to be in while flying.
Fortunately most passengers are snapping and clicking away with photos, and are all too happy to volunteer to take a photo for me.
Does a kid get how special this is? I doubt it, but I know he'll understand it later. Not many adults can look back on their childhoods and think, "wow, my Mom took me on a historic ride on a WWII bomber plane -- cool!". He'd better mention this at my funeral, and make sure my beautiful wooden model of the B-17 goes with me into my coffin!!
But that's WAYYY far off -- we have so much living to do together, so much learning the world together to do first. And how exciting it was to share that past living (much in part thanks to the sacrifices made by the very young men who flew on these plane) with the future living. I can think of no more fitting juxtaposition of past and future than that!
5/20/12
Super busy-swamped tonight preparing for a presentation I'm giving tomorrow at work....as usual, I go overboard and put far too much time, heart, soul, typing, mental and physical energy into it. But does anyone who knows me really think I can do anything else???
So one little "extra" my presentation will have is a description of how my small-company employer can do wireless network heatmapping and spectrum analysis, with a trainee demonstrating the process.
I was struck when this trainee said, "Look, a rainbow!" Truer than she knows. And now all the kids have seen with their own eyes what a microwave oven can do to a wireless network signal. No wonder dinner was late.
One could argue that I didn't need to go through the effort of setting up this photo shoot or hiring and training this model, but I hate cutting off the truly fun silly parts of a project, even if they're not strictly necessary. For better or worse, it seems this is I go through many things in life -- extraordinary absurd extra effort, to the point that the extras become almost necessary to make it worthwhile to the heart and soul.
Meantime, these photos will make the point that our ability to do RF planning is young (hah hah, get it?), but also that it's pretty easy with the right tools -- a kindergartner could do it!
And now, back to the grindstone....
5/16/12
This is why I was out of touch last weekend -- I hope these photos make up for it!
May 2012 - first camping trip of the year!
But alas, never mind this: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY (belated) from the most disorganized but appreciative loving daughter to my own mother!
5/15/12
Recently our school did a parent survey, which I never participated in, but I would have had I realized this question was on it:
Question: Would you prefer your childʼs teacher assign more or less homework?
Regular readers know what I'd answer to that! Here's what the (self-selected) parents who did answer came up with:
More: 35.1%
Same: 56.9%
Less: 8.0%
I have very very little support in the "Less" category!!!
5/8/12
Would this make some Moms crazy? Maybe, and perhaps to me it did a little, but it's easy to let go -- and laugh about later.
Katrina's choice of clothing today, on a super-hot day, was ... well interesting. She wore this clowny dress that I (regretfully) got her at Target (before realizing it was quite as bright and ill-fitting as it is). But everything's cute on a 5-year-old girl, so, whatever.
She knows enough to put something under it to avoid the showing-underpants problem at school. But despite a wide assortment of drawers in her drawers, she insisted on heavy wool skort, complete with its own set of shorts underneath!
And a T-shirt under the dress!
I tried to talk her out of it this morning, but she was insistent. Among all the battles I have as a Mom, this is very low on the list! Gabriel pretty much refused to wear long pants all winter last year, so, whatever. The only time he wore long pants this winter was when I insisted because we were headed to the mountains. I think I've proven myself as a let-it-go Mom! (Well, except for horrendous rudeness -- I can let major fashion problems go, but not mahor obnoxiousness.)
5/7/12
Actually, despite the lofty title, it was a pretty lazy weekend, but weather-wise, beautiful.
So beautiful that it seemed we just had to get out. I spent a fair amount of time gardening on Saturday with Katrina: planting two new plants, cutting back ones that are getting out of control, answering her incessant, "Moooo-oom?" every time she has something to say (sweet but tiresome).
But after a while I could tell the boys were getting stir-crazy and needed to get out. So I took them all to OSH to check out plants and patio furniture. Now that I want to be outside in our yards, we need somewhere to sit!
We couldn't find the firepit in the catalog, but Katrina enjoyed testing out a lounge chair.
When we got home, Julian and Katrina engaged in a game of "find the foxtails" -- that is, weeds that have nasty sticky seeds that cling to dogs' fur. We've mostly rid our yards and park strips of these unfriendly plants (I like native, but not too native), but there are still a few around. Then they decided to water some new plants, and some that aren't irrigated.
Though any kid would rather play video games, I was glad to see these two happily engaging in the garden and plants for the better part of the afternoon (Gabriel was inside obsessed with a voice recording project, which I allowed).
Somehow, the retro-snob in me has to believe this is better for them than what they want to do (which is sit inside playing video games on the computer all day). There's only a short window in your life that finding foxtails is a truly fun activity....funny, I'm getting back to that place in life myself!
But today, Sunday, as nice as it seemed to lounge around, I could sense that everyone needed to get out. I had planned to work as much as possible today, but I could feel burnout and stir-craziness building in everyone. Gabriel in particular gets into a state in which he's unbearably obnoxious and out-of-control.
So I endured the 30-minute process of getting everyone ready to get into the car and off for a little excursion. It wasn't totally random; it was a park in Los Gatos that I'd seen was connected to an open space preserve with short loop hikes -- perfect. Well, perfect if I'd noticed that the hikes didn't actually have trailheads in the developed park itself, and there was some hiking to do just to get to where I'd planned, if you'd downloaded and printed the correct map that is. The park didn't even post one!
But we made do. The objective was to get the kids (and myself) out, and that we did. We hiked a short 1.4-mile out-and-back along a fire road that was pretty steep. The boys were very engaged in Gabriel's off-road RC car, while Katrina happily chatted with me about how much she liked mountains and hiking.
On the way down, Katrina got ahead and was running, so I trotted to catch her to warn her that running downhill can lead to painful falls, but not in time -- she slid on leaves just as I was within earshot, and fell hard on her back. "I have butt burn!" she cried. She got over it in 5 minutes, but was much more cautious about running downhill after that. I've tripped and fallen running downhill too, and it was bad -- both knees, both elbows, lots of scrapes, and an out-of-commission thumb for a few days. It's easier on kids, but falling while running down hill is no fun.
Short but sweet, and totally what was called for. The rest of the afternoon was spent lounging around at home after a substantial snack (some would call it lunch but our timing was way off!) - which a nice little hike transforms from goofing off to a deserved relaxed afternoon.
We are very lucky to live in an area with so many opportunities for the beautiful outdoors so closeby!
And even closer -- our own backyard! A white "sticky monkey flower," some of which we saw in a light apricot color today at our open space preserve hike, truly native.
5/6/12
