August 29
I think that the same airplane takes off at the same time every morning, and I don't know how Peggy sleeps through it.
I got out of bed and took a shower, and then since I smelled coffee brewing I went downstairs to look, 'cause I didn't think that Peggy needed me to wake her up, and if she did I could always go back upstairs.
John and Chrissie were both in the kitchen already—they were both wearing sleeping clothes, and she went upstairs to use the shower. John poured me a cup of coffee and then said that I'd gotten my picture in the newspaper, and when I sat down he slid it over to me.
There was a big picture of everyone holding up their signs, and I thought that if any of the #freethenipple protesters were reading it they'd probably be mad that it only showed them from the shoulders up. And then there was a little picture alongside the article of me flying up to where you could see my belly.
We both thought it was pretty funny that I'd gotten in the newspaper for protesting but not for flying down The Incline or flying to Cameron Cone.
He asked if I was ready to go see the Air Force Base, and I said that I was. And I said that Peggy had mentioned that there was an airplane museum nearby, too, and he said that we could go to that as well.
It would be kind of boring waiting around until everyone else was ready to go. I guess that's what I get for being an early riser. So I asked if it was okay to walk around the neighborhood and maybe fly a little bit, too—since I'd already taken a shower, I didn't want to work up a lather. He said that it would be okay, and told me not to get lost.
Well, I didn't think that I would get lost but just in case I went upstairs and got my flight vest and put my portable telephone in the pocket, 'cause I knew that if I did get lost I could just land and read the street signs and then Peggy would know where I was and could tell me how to get back home.
I kinda had an idea of the shape of the neighborhood from driving in and out of it, so I went sort of north along their road until I got to the end of it and then turned west, and followed that road until it ended.
The next road ended at a little park, and I thought I'd fly over that, so I did. And I didn't land right away; I kept on flying, and since I was already flying I started to just circle around the neighborhood from the air.
All the houses were really clustered together, more than in Kalamazoo, I thought. And it made it really easy to get confused when I was in the air, and I was trying to focus in too much on the roofs to see which house was hers when I should have just gone to a landmark I knew: the big open pasture that was behind her house. So I went that way, and as soon as I was close I saw her house.
I landed right in front and went back inside and everyone was almost ready. John was in the shower, and Peggy and Chrissie were in the kitchen drinking coffee.
Peggy asked if I knew that I was in the paper, and I said that John had showed me. Then she asked if I'd noticed that they'd cut me off just above the teats and I hadn't but when I saw that it bothered me.
Chrissie told me that I ought to make sure to have all my flight gear, because she said that she thought I'd probably be asked to give a flying demonstration, so I went and got that. And then once John came down we all got in Chrissie's car, which was called a Challenger. It was kind of crowded for us to sit in the back but she said that it was more practical because her car had a special sticker which let it park at the base, and John's Highlander didn't.
The engine was rumbly and I thought that Mister Salvatore would really like the car. I bet he didn't know she had it, since she kept it in the garage where people couldn't see it.
When we got to the Air Force base, we had to go through a gate and Chrissie had to talk to some men called SFs who guarded the gate, and then when we were inside we all had to have special badges except for her because she already had one that was better than ours.
The inside parts of the Air Force base were pretty boring. There was a man who led us through the base and I could tell that he was keeping an eye on us. Then he asked if I wanted to go out on the field, first, or if I wanted to see the space command center.
I thought that the space command center would be really interesting, so he took us to a room that was full of computers and there were lots of people working at them and it kind of reminded me a little bit of the airplane directors, although it wasn't in a tower. They couldn't use binoculars to see the spaceships that they commanded, so they had to rely on their computers to tell them where they were.
He said that they helped to put satellites in orbit and kept the ones that we had safe. And then he asked how much I knew about them and I didn't really know a lot, so he explained how satellites could talk to my watch and that's how it knew where it was—that was how GPS worked—and that there were also radio messages that went through a satellite, and space internet, and so many other things.
They monitored the weather—I knew about that, but I didn't exactly know how they did it, so he explained a little bit about the different types of orbits that they could use and also how they had different kinds of cameras and sensors so that they could see different things.
I asked him how many there were, and he said that the United States had 658 in orbit and overall there were 2,271 which sounded like a whole lot. And he said that there were some even orbiting the sun, but that those weren't under their command.
I told him that I'd seen the International Space Station, although it had just looked like a little star moving across the sky. And that was pretty amazing, to think that there were people living up there.
He let me go into the room and sit down in one of the chairs and he put a headset on me which didn't really fit over my ears at all, but that was okay because if it had I wouldn't have known what to say anyway. And he asked if I minded if he took a picture on my portable telephone and I didn't mind at all.
We went into another room next and there were lots of pictures on the wall of long rockets and funny-looking little things that had a shiny wrinkled cover and little black panels and dishes on sticks jutting out from them and that was what satellites looked like. The black panels were satellite leaves, which is how they got their energy. Other ones, he said, had little bits of plutonium in them which was what made them work but that the US only had one left and it didn't work anymore and was just orbiting around and hopefully would stay up there for a long, long time.
We went outside next, and he showed me some of the airplanes that they had. The biggest ones were called C-130s, and they were huge. They had gigantic propellers to make them go, and I found out that the design was over sixty years old but they kept on flying them because they couldn't find anything better. He said that they could land on dirt runways, which was something that most big airplanes couldn't do, and he said that one had even landed and taken off from an aircraft carrier, which was a big floating runway. I wanted to go inside one just to look around but I wasn't allowed to.
I could tell from the outside that my whole village would have fit inside of it, though.
Then he said that if I would give a little flying demonstration, after that they'd fly one of the C-130s around the airport so that I could see it. And that sounded like it would be fun.
He said that we'd have lunch first, to give everyone time to prepare, and then I could demonstrate for the pilots.
So we ate in their cafeteria, which was a lot like the cafeteria at college except that it was much cleaner and everyone there was in really good shape. And a lot of them came over to see me, especially after word got around that I'd be doing a flying demonstration. I hadn't heard anybody announce it but I guess it was just like every other kind of gossip where when a couple of ponies know pretty soon everypony does.
I had to wait for permission to fly because the main airport had a couple of airplanes that needed to leave, but once they were gone I was allowed to fly, as long as I kept towards the Air Force's end of the airport and didn't go too high, and they told me that I had to monitor their air traffic control frequency and if they told me to get out of the way I had to. So I told them that I understood all of that, and I decided that I was going to gallop down the runway a little bit before I took off.
When I was galloping as fast as I could, I put out my wings and jumped, and then started flapping to gain altitude. And I kept kind of low so that everyone could see me, and I did some wing rolls and loops and even a backflip, then I flew the length of the runway and did a rolling drop turn, until I was only a few feet above the ground, and I glided the whole length of the runway, then did a really sharp climb at the top.
I lost all my airspeed and then did a tail-first fall which was something that I rarely ever tried because it was only good for showing off. And when I got close to the ground I dropped my muzzle back down and went right alongside the row of men and women who were watching me, and landed kind of in the middle. Then, just to show them that I could, I took off almost straight up, did a circle over the field, and landed again.
I called the airplane directors and told them that I was back on the ground and they thanked me for letting them know. I wonder if they were watching from their tower with binoculars? I bet they were.
Well, everyone who wasn't getting their airplane ready wanted to talk to me, and they asked if all pegasuses could fly like I did and I had to admit that a lot of them could fly better because I wasn't a stunt flyer, I was a cloud-puncher, and pretty soon I found myself talking to a lot of pilots about flying in bad weather and that was a lot like talking to other weatherponies.
I think we could have spent all afternoon talking except that they got their airplane ready to fly and so we all lined back up to watch it take off. And it was a big, loud, ungainly thing, and when it started its takeoff roll I didn't think that it would ever get airborne. But for something as big as it was it got in the air pretty quickly. I don't think that the airplane I flew in to Michigan took off that fast.
They flew it up and around the airport and it didn't do any of the things that I had done but that was probably for the best. One of the pilots told me that it was a shame that we weren't further out of the city, because then maybe they'd do a flare drop and that was really something to see. He said that some people called it angel's wings, 'cause that's what it looked like out behind the airplane.
It lumbered around the airport and then came back in for a landing and it came down really so steeply I thought it might crash, especially since the propellers were hardly turning. And as soon as the wheels touched, the engines sped up and the whole nose of the airplane dropped down as it came to a stop and it was amazing to see something that big stop that quickly.
It came back around to the taxiway and then it backed up into its spot and they turned off the engines.
Before we left the air force base, everybody shook my hoof and they gave me a patch that showed their insignia, and I thought that I ought to put it on my flight vest, and then we went to the airplane and spaceship museum.
We went around the inside first, and there were exhibits that talked about the missiles—which were rockets—that defended America from its enemies, and there was some equipment from the old base which this base had replaced. It had been located in a mountain to keep it safe because humans had big bombs which could get through anything else.
And I got to do a training simulation for a Peacekeeper missile launch, which was fun. There was a computer voice which told me what I had to do, and I had a lot of trouble with it because none of the buttons were hoof-friendly, and the computer didn't listen when I talked back to it. So I tried a couple of times but I didn't get it right any of the times and Peggy said that if ponies were defending the US we'd all be dead, and I said that ponies would put bigger buttons and switches on the equipment. And I said I didn't think she could do better so of course she proved me wrong.
There were a lot more airplanes outside but we had to stay inside because while we'd been playing with the practice missile, it had started raining and hailing and I felt really guilty that I wasn't in the air. I even had all my flight gear with me and I was sure I could have gotten permission to fly and see what the clouds were doing and maybe move some of them out of the way.
We never got a break in the rain, and finally me and Peggy decided that we'd run outside and at least look at the EC-121, which you were allowed to go inside. John and Chrissie had seen it before and didn't want to get wet, so they stayed inside.
By the time we got there we were soaking wet and it was like being in a drum inside the airplane, but since we were already there we looked around at all the radars and radios that it had. She said that it was kind of funny to think that the airplane radio that was strapped to my foreleg was better than any of the radios inside this airplane, and my watch was a better navigational tool than anything this airplane had on it.
Neither of us was looking forward to the run back to the museum, and Peggy said that I should use my Silver-sense to tell her when the rain was going to be the lightest and I said that on the ground, in a place where I didn't know the weather patterns, it wouldn't be much more than a guess.
She said that she thought it would be a better guess than she'd make, so we waited at the back of the airplane until a slight clear spot and we ran back and just made it inside before a fresh cluster of hailstones came down.
The curators at the museum were really nice and kept it open a little bit late until the lightning and hail had stopped, and Peggy bought me a pilot's hat at the gift store.
We drove to Sandy's Restaurant which was right by the air force base for dinner. John ordered a coyote burger and I asked him if it was made of actual coyotes, and he said it was and that was why he hadn't ordered the cowboy burger. But then I looked at the menu and it said that it was made out of beef, not coyote.
It was still raining when we got back home, and after me and Peggy got dried off and Peggy put on new clothes, we sat in the living room together and played a game called Monopoly. I couldn't roll the dice, so Peggy did that for me. And some of it was luck, because you didn't know how far you were going to move, but some of it was skill, too, and they let me read all the property cards and I figured out that the best things to own were the railroads, and also the orange and light blue properties, and so while Chrissie and Peggy focused on getting the expensive properties on the far side of the board, I tried to build my empire on the near side.
I didn't win, but I came in second, and everyone including me was kind of surprised by that. But the railroads had been a really good investment for me, and I hadn't lost anything by trading away Ventnor Ave. to get the Short Line.
Then Peggy told them that I was really smart at math, and I'd probably figured out what the best odds were and Chrissie said that using math was cheating. I didn't think so; the numbers were printed right on the cards and anybody could look at them.
But Peggy was laughing, so it was okay.
We had hot chocolate for a snack, and then Peggy and I went upstairs to bed. Tomorrow was going to be my last day in Colorado, so we wanted to be well-rested.