September 5
Four AM was no time to wake up. Miss Cherilyn's alarm work me up and the first thing she said when it went off was 'shit,' and I kinda agreed with her. I banged my head on the ceiling when I sat up and was rubbing a hoof against my ear when she stuck her head up over the edge to see if I was awake.
She asked if it was okay if she turned on the lights and I said that it was, and then she helped me get out of bed. And she put on pants and shoes and then sat on the bed with her head in her hands and said that it was too early and train schedules were dumb. And I agreed with her, train schedules were dumb.
She said that she needed a few minutes to wake up and she was going to find the shower and get properly dressed and told me to hold down the fort, which I guess meant to watch the room because we didn't have a fort, not even a pillow fort. So I said that I would and she got clean clothes out of her bag and went out of the room in search of the showers and I got out my Bible and sat on her bed and started reading from where I'd left off in Ezekiel.
God took Ezekiel to a valley of bones, and He made them come back to life, putting muscle and skin on them, and then He said that He would do the same for the people of Israel, and He said that He would make David king over all them. And then He said that He was going to get back at all the nations who had scattered His people and put them into slavery, and He said that the temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt. He showed Ezekiel a vision of the city, and had a bronze man measure it out so that Ezekiel could tell everyone how big it was supposed to be.
Then after Ezekiel had seen all that, God told him how the priests must behave, and what they should do. And I hoped that they'd listen to Him and follow His rules. Then He described how the land would be given to the tribes once they had returned, and even where they could fish. And that was the end of Ezekiel, and the next book was Daniel, which started by saying that Babylon had besieged Jerusalem. Which confused me, but then when I got to the end I realized that it was taking place earlier, because King Nebuchadnezzar and King Cyrus had already been mentioned before.
I had just started reading about Nebuchadnezzar's dreams when Mister Salvatore came in, and he said he was checking on us and he had coffee from the dining car, which he set down on our little table and then he sat on her bed next to me and said he was sorry that we had to get off the train so early, but it would be worth it when we got where we were going. I wanted to know where that was but he wouldn't tell me.
He said that we'd pick up our rental car once we got to the train station and then we'd stop somewhere for a real breakfast, and tonight we'd get back on the train but it would be at a more reasonable time.
I asked if we were going back to Washington, DC, and he said we were, so I told him that when we got there if we had time I wanted to see the Air and Space museum, and he said that we could, because we had almost all day between trains.
Then Miss Cherilyn came in and she was kind of surprised to see him in our room, but she was really happy that he'd brought coffee.
Since it was the middle of the night, the conductor didn't announce the stop over the train's speakers, but he did come to our room to make sure that we were awake and ready to go, and he helped us carry all our bags to the door. Then he told us to stay back and he opened the door and leaned his head out and it was kind of hot and humid and I could faintly smell salt air, too.
He was kind of disappointed when he found out that we'd gotten an Equinox, but I liked it. It was kinda like Pastor Liz's Rav-4, and there was lots of room in the back for our luggage so I wouldn't have it all crowded around me.
We drove on a highway and stopped at a Waffle House for breakfast. Mister Salvatore said that was the best place to eat breakfast on a road trip, because there was lots of grease on everything and that gave you the energy you needed to get through the day.
Well, I wasn't sure I wanted to have lots of grease, so I just had waffles. I had one with pecans in it and one with peanut butter and those were both really good.
And then we didn't have anything to do for a while because it was so early and the sun was barely up. So he decided that we'd drive down to the harbor and I could fly out over the ocean if I wanted to.
I thought that would be a lot of fun, so we went back on the highway until it ended, then drove past a bunch of nice houses until we got to a park that was right on the shore, and he told me to not take too long.
Miss Cherilyn helped me put on my flight vest and he said that I should stay low and I wouldn't need to warn any airplanes, but I put on my radio anyway. I'd seen seaplanes at the Air Zoo, and I wouldn't want to be in the way if one of them wanted to land in the harbor.
It was a few miles out to the harbor entrance, and it didn't take me too long to cover the distance. I looked back a couple of times to make sure that I would know what landmarks to head for when I came back in, because what I'd thought was obvious on the way out might not be so obvious on the way back in.
There were already a few boats and one ship in the harbor as well, and I waved as I flew over a cargo ship that was on its way in. I had to gain a little bit more altitude as I went over it because the deckhouse in the back was so tall. It said No Smoking in big letters across the deckhouse but I don't think that was actually its name.
I angled for the southern tip of land that separated the harbor from the ocean, and then I landed there and took off my radio so I could splash in the surf a little bit. Then I saw a sand crab, so I started digging in the sand until I'd caught a couple of them.
I would have liked to spend more time on the shore—Lake Michigan was nice, but it wasn't the same as a proper ocean.
The wind was coming off the land, so it took me a little bit longer to fly back in, and the city had definitely woken up by the time I landed. There were lots more boats leaving their docks, and there was more traffic on the road, too.
I landed on the little boardwalk and Miss Cherilyn helped me take off my vest and then I kicked the sand off my hooves and we got back in the Equinox and drove back the way we'd come.
There were lots of signs on the highway for an airport, and Mister Salvatore was going where they said, and I wasn't sure why he'd brought me to this airport when there were lots of airports which were closer, unless there was something very special here.
Well, instead of going to the airport itself, we went around back where there was a really, really big building that said Boeing on it, and he said that now that I'd seen how the little airplanes were made, I was going to get to see how the really big ones were. He said that the best part was that it was a holiday so I could see what I wanted without getting in anyone's way.
We were met in the lobby by a woman named Casey Singleton, who shook my hoof and then gave me a little history of Boeing. She said that their founder had first flown in Curtiss biplanes but after he crashed one and found out it would take months to get replacement parts, he realized that he could build his own airplane faster, so he did. And she said that in the early days, the airplanes were built mostly out of wood, which was why he had decided to have his company in Washington, because there was lots of wood there.
They had built training seaplanes, which were airplanes that could land on water, which they sold to the government in World War One. And then after the war there were a surplus of airplanes, so for a while they'd sold furniture, until they started to build fighter airplanes and mail airplanes.
She said that they'd next built passenger airplanes for their own airline, which was called United Airlines, and that was now the biggest airline in the world. She told us that Boeing didn't own them anymore, because the government had thought that Boeing's airplanes were too safe and reliable, which gave United an unfair advantage over the competition.
During World War Two, they had designed and built some of the best bombers, like the B-17 and the B-29, and after that they built B-47s and B-52s, which she said were still in service with the Air Force. And they'd started making better and better passenger jets, too, from the 707 all the way up to the 787 Dreamliner, which was what they built here.
It was the first passenger jet to be built out of composite materials instead of aluminum, which made it lighter and more efficient than other airplanes. She said it also had special engines, which used less fuel and made it quieter than other similar airplanes.
She said that the factory was special, too, because it was designed to not have any waste. She said that everything that could be recycled was, and that the roof was covered with solar panels that provided a fifth of all their electricity needs.
The room where they built the airplanes was huge, and it was hard to take it all in. It was a lot like the Cessna factory; they had big blue jigs that held things in place, but everything was so much larger it was unbelievable. There were scaffolding systems that went up and over the airplanes, and they had working platforms at different levels. I bet they would have liked to have a bunch of pegasuses helping them build the airplanes, 'cause then they wouldn't have needed as many scaffoldings.
Casey took us to what she said was the very beginning of construction, and it was a section of fuselage mounted on a giant machine. She showed me a machine which had rolls that looked like tape on it, and she said that the machine would rotate the fuselage and the other machine would put the tape on, which was special carbon fiber tape, and that was how they made it. Then it had to go in a big oven to be heated, which made it strong. She said that in principle, it was kind of like a clay pot.
Since nobody was working, I couldn't see it in action, but she showed me a video on her portable telephone of the fuselage being turned and having the tape put on, and I just couldn't imagine how you could do that with something so big.
Then she showed me where they put all the sections of the airplane together, and how the jigs would line everything up so that they could bolt it together just like a bunch of lengths of pipe. And there was also a big thing that looked like a bridge with wheels, which held the airplane's wings.
Casey told me that the wings came all the way from Japan, and they were carried inside an airplane called the Dreamlifter, which was a modified 747. I couldn't imagine how they could fit inside another airplane but she said that they did.
We went a little bit further along, and she showed me the engines, which had openings that were big enough I could have flown into them if they hadn't had covers. I suppose that they didn't want anybody or anything going into the engines that wasn't supposed to be there.
After she'd showed me all the other big parts of the airplane, we went over to one that was partially assembled so that I could see the inside of it. She said that I was allowed to go inside, but she would tell me where I had to walk and I couldn't touch anything and that Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn would have to stay outside. So I climbed up the stairs and let her go first. It looked a lot bigger inside than the airplane I'd flown on, which was because there wasn't anything on the inside yet.
We went all the way to the cockpit in front, and then back to the tail of the airplane where she showed me a big panel that she said was called the aft pressure bulkhead. She said that everything in front of it was pressurized and nothing behind it was.
We had to go back outside to go down to the cargo compartment, which was just as empty as the upstairs had been. Just like above, there were lots of wires running everywhere, and little compartments full of different electric machines.
I waited on the ground while Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn took a tour of it, one at a time. Then Casey came back down and said that we could all go and look at one further down that was nearly complete.
It looked a lot more like an airplane inside, because it had the walls and ceiling finished, and most of the seats were in it, too. She opened up the pilot's door and let me look around inside there, and after telling me not to touch anything, she said that I could sit in the pilot's seat.
Casey asked if I would mind having my picture taken, and I didn't mind at all, so she took a couple of pictures of me sitting there and then went around the scaffolding to the front of the airplane and took a picture through the windshield of me sitting at the controls.
Once Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn had also gotten their turn looking at the airplane, Casey said that we could fly the Dreamliner simulator if we wanted to, and then she asked me if I'd ever used one before. I said that I had at Cessna, and she said that this was going to be a completely different experience for me.
So she made a telephone call and Mister Salvatore convinced her to let him be the co-pilot and I wish I'd thought to bring my pilot's hat with me—it was out in the Equinox, but I didn't want to leave to go get it.
While we were waiting for the flight instructor to arrive, we had pizzas for lunch, and then it was time to go in the simulator.
This was just like the Cessna one, except that it was a lot bigger and there were lots more buttons and knobs. And the instructor, who was named Ted, along with Casey and Miss Cherilyn, all stood in the back.
The Dreamliner was slow and sluggish and I had to anticipate everything and then wait for it to happen. And Mister Salvatore was busy pushing buttons and turning knobs for me, and I was pretty sure I didn't have what it took to be a Dreamliner pilot. Maybe if I practiced a lot more I could.
Sailing ships were a lot like that, too. You had to anticipate things before you did them, or else you'd be caught with the sails in the wrong place or find yourself in a narrow channel with noplace to go but the rocks. So after I'd practiced some and he'd let me work the controls when I was way up in the imaginary sky and had time to recover, I sort of got an idea of how it was going to respond to me, but even so the airplane shook its control stick at me a few times and the computer voice kept warning me about airspeed and terrain and glideslope on my landing approach.
I did get it on the runway and stopped before the end, but Ted said that I'd probably bent the landing gear and taken down a few of the approach lights as well. I didn't think that was my fault; they shouldn't have put lights in the way of the airplane.
Mister Salvatore was looking a bit tired, too—he'd put a lot of effort into all of his controls, and all I'd really had to do was steer the airplane side to side and up and down.
We had some more of the pizza for dinner, and Ted promised that he would make sure that I got training credit on the Dreamliner simulator. He said that he'd never thought he'd be teaching a pegasus how to fly a commercial jet, and that he was really proud of how well I'd done. And Casey took my picture with him, too.
Well, I thought that before we left I ought to fly for them, because I was sure they'd like to see it. So we went outside to the parking lot and I knew that I had to stay pretty low because we were right next to the airport. So I flew straight up and then looked at where the runways were and there was one that was kind of pointed in our direction but off to the side, so I got up a bit higher and did some wing rolls and loops and then dove down and skimmed along the ground before pulling back up and looping back around to make another pass of the parking lot. I also went around some of the light posts, trying to get my wingtip as close to them as I could without actually touching them.
They both thought that was pretty amazing, and I thought about saying how I'd gotten a college degree just for flying in a wind tunnel, but that felt too much like bragging, so I didn't.
Before we left, Casey gave me a book about Boeing, another book about the Dreamliner that she said had cutaway views and showed how everything worked, plus a little model of the airplane and two pictures—one of me sitting in the cockpit of the airplane and one of me and Ted out in the parking lot. It wasn't the one she'd had me pose for, but it was of me stretching out my wing and him crouching down to look at it.
She asked me if I'd mind signing a couple of pictures, too, and I didn't mind at all. So she offered me more copies of the picture of me sitting in the Dreamliner's pilot seat and I signed them with a black felt-tip pen.
The sun was just ducking over the horizon when we got to the train station and we unpacked the Equinox and Mister Salvatore left the keys in it so that it could get picked up and returned now that we didn't need it any more.
I thought that we were taking the very same train back—that it had gotten to its destination and turned around, but the locomotives had different numbers on them, so it must have been a different train even though it had the same name as the first one.
This time I had my own room and Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn had theirs, too. He promised me that for the rest of our trip we'd be getting on and off trains at normal times, which was nice.
When the train had left the station, I had the conductor fold my bed down for me, and then I sat on the bed and wrote in my journal until my eyelids got heavy. It felt like it would be too much work to get up and turn the light off, so I just closed my eyes and went to sleep.