Loads of Fun at Pima Air & Space Museum

There are some major perks to being in a relationship. However, there are also sacrifices.

For men like Miguel, this might mean having to watch "Dancing With the Stars" with me on Tuesday nights or suffering through boutique shopping while on vacation. For women like me, this means spending a Saturday afternoon at a football game staring at a catatonic mascot, while Miguel rattles off every NCAA football statistic that anyone could ever care to know as I listlessly nod with half-hearted interest.

It also means waking up early on a school vacation day (last Monday, September 13) in order to be his tour companion at the Pima Air and Space Museum and Davis-Monthan Air Base bone yard (airplane graveyard).

You might think to yourself, "That's not a sacrifice... weren't you in the Air Force? You must love planes!" The answer to that is no. I do not like them. I've never liked them, and the only thing I really appreciate about them is that they get me from Point A to Point B very quickly. The Air Force was, frankly, a bit of a conflicted and misguided adventure on my part... a way to see the world, get paid, gain valuable job experience (haha!), and to be honest, my last resort since Army and Navy weren't accepting ROTC candidates my junior year of college, and I had no idea what else I should do with my linguistics degree.

But alas, enough of that nonsense... you get the picture... I don't like planes, and even after four years inundated amongst them, I can still barely tell the difference between an F-16 and a British Tornado. (Miguel was aghast at some of my aircraft recognition errors...) Now, give me a surface-to-air missile, and I might be able to tell you something, but airplanes... errrr, no, not really...

Anyway, we paid our fees for the "bone yard" tour at the museum and boarded a large coach bus. Miguel, me, a crusty old tour leader, and about 25 camera-clad and giddy middle-aged and elderly men (most of whom were either alone or with geeked-out male friends).

The bus made its way a few miles to the local Air Force base, which is home to this airplane graveyard of hundreds of old military jets. I personally was hoping to see some rusty commercial airliners as well, but apparently AirTran has already bought all of them (that's a joke).

Miguel was positively ebullient...

... here he is on the other side of the bus aisle in an empty row so he could get a better look at the hundreds of planes on the opposite side of the bus from where he should have been sitting (with me).

He took no fewer than 76 photos of these old planes... here is a sample of his work...


... I kept asking, "what are you going to do with all of these boring pictures?"

I was a good sport in the beginning, but after the 9,455th plane, I started getting a bit weary...

... listening to our guide drone on about things like, "this Canberra twin-engined jet has a wing span of 120 feet, which is the exact distance flown by the Wright Brothers in Kitty Hawk... does anyone know which Wright Brother had a mustache?" Zzzzzzzzz....

Once we finally finished the "bone yard" tour, the bus took us back to the museum, where we (or should I say Miguel) wandered the grounds (with me following) from 10:30am until 2:30pm. That equals four hours (not including the bus trip)... four hours!

Here is my photo journal of our day...

First and foremost... JFK's personal crapper...

... aboard his private Presidential jet. Cool.

HOUR ONE:

Miguel and a MiG-21 (yes, I know this one...)

The best picture of the day.

I was enthused about pretending to drive the luggage truck...

... in what could possibly be the world's dorkiest picture ever taken.

HOUR TWO:

This plane looked like a pregnant whale, and so it interested me...

Apparently NASA used it to transport large shuttle pieces.

HOUR THREE:

But I started losing my luster after the fourth airplane hangar...

Fake smile.

However, Miguel loved every minute...

I think this is that damn Canberra plane again.

HOUR FOUR:

I call this my Terri Schiavo moment...

... where all life ceased to exist and a vegetative state emerged.

And all for love...

Look how happy Miguel is here in front of the Mickey Mouse plane.

As for me, I revived in the car en route to lunch.

Ciao!