Fly boys, whisky and a Sentimental Journey

If I were smarter, younger, better-looking, studlier and less of a slacker I would quit my job and become a fighter pilot. One of the Blue Angels, so I could tour the country like a rock star, wowing people gathered on beaches, scaring animals in zoos and pestering high rise high rent district types with my soaring skills like they did last weekend in Chicago.
 
Imagine how easy it must be to get laid if you are such a fly boy. Just run the You Tube clip of your stunts off your iPhone and have your potential mate extrapolate from it how wild you must be in bed. Can you really make it go up like that, big boy? And dart across the sky at a 45 degree angle?

But hey, at least this summer I have the other parts of this suburban fantasy-on-a-budget lifestyle down pat. Starting off that weekend, I golfed in an outing for work Friday, where two in a foursome behind us could barely speak English by the 7th  hole, they were that stewed. And I am not saying anyone cheated, per se, but a winning score of 57, even in a best ball format, means 3s on just about every hole. White people. No wonder we rule the world.

I'm not complaining - a sunny day outside, cracking wise, having a couple beers, and dressed in shorts and a ... what the hell is the difference between a golf shirt and a polo shirt anyway? One of those.

And that Sunday, I headed up to the Irish Fest in Milwaukee, where the baking concrete and asphalt surface of the Summerfest grounds made me thirsty. This led to learning a valuable lesson about whisky, namely that it is not a good idea to drink much of it on a hot day, even if you are in the shade and some guy on a business trip from New Jersey is buying it for you and for your big red headed friend who looks more Irish than you but actually isn't. And it didn't help that the bar tenders were nice guys who seemed to ply us for their amusement.

All I am gonna say beyond this is around 9 p.m. I left DNA samples in a garbage can shortly after taking a bite out of a corned beef sandwich - and that someone may have licked my ear. I am not sure about the last part. It could have just been a beautiful dream. But I am pretty sure there will be some stories told back East and up in Milwaukee about some idiots from Chicago at the Jameson Bar on the roof. And before anyone calls MADD, I did NOT drive home. I also was not that drunk - no headache, but damn if my stomach didn't feel like Dick Cheney had crawled inside and took a peat bog piss.

Thing is, Monday I actually was supposed to go up in military plane, Sentimental Journey a B-17G bomber that survived World War II. Out of commission, it winters, like a lot of oldsters, in Arizona and spends its summers touring the country. While my stomach had its act together, one of the plane's engines needed a few parts from NAPA, so the trip was delayed until Wednesday.

Tourists have to pay $425 for a 20-30 minute voyage this weekend at DeKalb's Corn Fest, but it costs $3,000 an hour to keep the craft in the air, Russ the pilot told us.

Back in its prime, the plane could climb to 30,000 feet, but the cabin wasn’t pressurized, so it got to arctic temperatures inside the cabin. They had to plug in their clothes in an attempt to stay warm and guys got frost bite while shooting waist guns that held 9 yards of ammo a clip - supposedly leading to the phrase, the whole 9 yards, we were told. (The WWII phrase most fitting for any era: SNAFU).

On the B-17 belly is a ball turret, so compact that the shooter could only be 5’ 4’’ tall and weigh no more than about 150 pounds. And even those these planes has early computer systems on them, it took different, maybe ballsier skills than the video game math heads who are fighter pilots today. You can learn more yourself if you Google it and come to your own conclusions.

Once airborne I was thinking, sure, this is pretty cool, me up here with a video camera, maneuvering my less than agile frame through a ramp and crawling into the front gun station for a panoramic view of the smooth as a baby's butt landing near farmland. But how odd that I am up in a plane where young men were probably scared shitless fighting in a war that was the sequel to the war that was supposed to end all wars. And since they were in this plane, they were pretty damn good at what they did and/or pretty damn lucky too, seeing as most of these big aluminum cans in the sky didn't make it back.

War shouldn't seem so fun. Then again, I am a pussy at heart - and a guy who knows he has it pretty easy, whose only real complications, thus far, have largely been of his own making. Lucky, indeed. At least for now.