Located near Dayton, Ohio, the museum welcomes 1.2 million visitors each year. The museum’s galleries present military aviation history, boasting more than 300 aircraft and aerospace vehicles – many rare and one-of-a-kind, thousands of historical items, and exhibits that bring history to life and connect the Wright brothers’ legacy with today’s stealth and precision technology. Adjacent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the sprawling complex consists of five large hangars, with additional buildings on the base. The main facility includes: Early Years Gallery Air Power Gallery Modern Flight Gallery Cold War Gallery Missile and Space Gallery Across the runways and located within the base boundaries are the Presidential and Research and Development/Flight Test Galleries. The museum also has a Memorial Park and an IMAX Theater. This is an Air Force museum (i.e. no Navy or commercial aircraft). My favorites, the bombers, are well-represented here, and include the B-17, B-24, B-29, B-36, B-47, B-52, B-58, XB-70, and B-1. Access to the Presidential/R&D Galleries is controlled, and a valid photo ID or passport will be required to take the shuttle bus to that location. Here you will find many of the presidential planes throughout history, including the VC-54, VC-118, VC-121, and VC-137. Plan to spend two days if you intend to see everything.

It is hard to describe Dayton.  On the one hand, it may appear to be just a blip on the map and a stopover on the way to get somewhere else, but on the other hand, it has contributed so much to mankind.  Starting with the National Cash Register Company, and countless other achievements, it enjoys status as the birthplace of heavier-than-air flight.  The original Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop is restored and open for tours.

There is the excellent US Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.  A recovered UFO and its alien travelers are housed in Hangar 18.

Also in Dayton is Frank Lloyd Wright's Meyers Medical Clinic and Boswell House.

I sleep in on a bit on Monday but figure since I'm home I might as well go in and put the time in at work and save the vacation for a time later in the year.  Use the automated checking system every day to check on the status of my bag which remains missing.  Finally on Friday I get a phone call that turns out to be from the US Airways Corporate Offices in Pittsburgh.  Now usually when they find a lost bag, its transported on the next available flight and then delivered via a local delivery service.  I've had this happen on one other occasion when I travelled and had a bag delayed.  But not this time.  Somehow my bag ended up in the corporate office in Pittsburgh (Huh?) and they needed information to FedEx my bag back to me.  I gave them the information, but never did think to ask why the nonstandard delivery when I had them on the phone.  Oh well, my bag made it back the following Tuesday, nine days after I did (hey, maybe it went to Vegas wthout me), and as far as I know all of my stuff was present and accounted for.

Had we waited for the later Philly-Dayton flight on Sunday, we would have actually made it home before we ended up arriving with the cancelled/delayed connection in Pittsburgh.

And US Airways refunded the miles and money I had used to purchase the tickets since they could not get me to my destination in a reasonable time frame.  Remember to use the term Trip in Vain if something like this ever happens where they can not get you to your destination to make it worth your while before you need to return home.

Oh well, #$%^ happens, you deal with it and come out the other side.  Hopefully still smiling.

In late 2004, I was worried that US Airways was going to go bankrupt and I was going to lose the frequent flyer miles I had with them.  So I convinced my brother to go on a long weekend trip to Vegas if I could find a way to use the miles.  After some searching I found a flight out on a Sat. morning with a return back home on the red-eye on Mon. night.  So a chance to spend a weekend with my brother and do a little gambling sounded like a good idea.

Headed to the airport on Sat. morning and things weren't looking pretty.  It was lightly snowing in the Dayton area, but a full blown nor'easter was supposed to explode on the east coast later in the afternoon.  We were supposed to be out of Philadelphia by that time, but you never can tell.  We asked at check-in whether we could re-route through Charlotte instead of Philly and while the agent said he could get us to Charlotte OK, our odds of getting on a plane to Vegas were slim with the flights already overbooked.  So it looked like the gambling was going to start even before we reached Las Vegas as we got our boarding passes for the flight to Philadelphia and proceeded to the gate.  Flight to Philadelphia went smoothly but exiting the plane to snow gently descending from the sky was to prove an ill omen for the rest of the weekend.

Heading off to work for a living.

I've done a couple of trips like this over the years where I work on a project for the week and then head off on a personal trip.  It works out well because I get to expense the portion of the flight based on if I had gone home at the standard time (in this case on Friday afternoon).  I don't remember the exact details, but it usually works that if I had purchased the work ticket for Mon-Fri that would have cost around $500 (I price out an itinerary for expense report submittal).  But adding the Seattle legs only increased the price to say $650.  So I get a long weekend flight to Seattle for something like $150.  Sometimes you have to search around for a city where this works but I've done Seattle and Denver among others using this method.

  Was actually at WPAFB but it won't show up on this map software.  So I put in the airport city which is Columbus.
  There isn't much to do here, however..  The Memphis bell is being restored there.
  The AFB probably has the most going on.