(AT-6 Texan WWII trainers. 24 of them are launching for Washington with a real B-25 Mitchell medium bomber- the Panchito, out of Delaware- to fly in formation by the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery in honor of America’s disabled veterans. The flight was supposed to happen last Friday but washed out that day and Saturday).
It has been a wild week. The first Ebola infection documented in America has just been reported. We will see where this all goes. Maybe they will surprise me and this will end well. Never can tell.
I am stalling this morning at the farm. There is going to be a mass flight north from T.I. Martin regional airport to Washington of 30 WWII trainers- AT-6 Texans- and a B-25 Mitchell bomber.
I would go to the Air Fest, which was delayed Friday and Saturday due to rain, and try to make A Taste of Culpeper down by the depot, but regrettably I have a reunion in Maryland to attend this afternoon, and it is 119 miles away.
The authorities are being dicks about driving to T.I. Martin Field, where the flight activities are going to be conducted now that the skies have cleared. I stopped in the rain yesterday to ask the State Trooper at the junction what was going on, and he said the only way in was by yellow school bus from Eastern View High School, six miles down Route 29.
They want visitors to park there to avoid congestion at the field, the trooper informed me, and he was polite but firm. I thanked him and hooked a left on Bel Pre Road to drive the back way up to Fleetwood Hill and see how they were doing on demolishing the Spite House at the summit, where J.E.B. Stuart’s headquarters had been in the Battle of Brandy Station in 1863.

(This is how the summit of Fleetwood Hill looked in sunshine last week).
I parked to take a look and was happily surprised to see that the structure is gone, down to the foundations. The summit is going to look pretty much the way it did a hundred and fifty-one years ago, at the intersection of Bel Pre and Stuart Lane.

Parking at the High school is not going to be on the way to Maryland, so I think I will stop at the gas station about a mile away and watch the aircraft launch from there. Then I will get on the road and head for the Terrapin State. I remembered to take the handgun out of my travel bag, so I think I will be mostly legal on the two-and-a-half hour journey when I am in the People’s Republic on the Mason-Dixon Line.

I am in the process of having several epiphanies- the people at the company that has had me on part time for the last fifteen months laid off my Marine Colonel buddy this week and I think I am not long for the part-time employment that kept me hanging on in Arlington.
It is not worth whining about, but as it was, the amount they paid me was not sufficient to fully cover maintaining two residences, but it was close enough that I didn’t mind doing it to stay in touch with my ersatz family at Big Pink and at the Willow restaurant. I can’t work the way I used to, so time for a change.
The time is at hand for doing other things.
In the meantime, I gotta run for the airport and listen for the sound of massive radial engines thundering in the morning sun.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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