Despite several hours of recent exposre to the Manilow Virus, as Dr. Omally would call it, I managed to rally and have a reasonably decent weekend. Some local stupidity did tend to interfere, but I didn’t let it get to me.
Saturday, my plan was to attend the airshow at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, which is just northwest of Atlanta, situated right up against the Lockheed-Martin factory where they build the C-130 Hercules transport plane.
Unfortunately, most of my morning was spent at the office, waiting for my paycheck to arrive … it was overnighted for Saturday delivery to the Director of Engineering’s home, and we then had to rendezvous with him. Unfortunately, none of us realized that Fed Ex delivers as late as 1:30 PM on Saturdays, so there went my morning. I finally got to the bank, just before 2PM, and set off for the airshow knowing full well I would never make it before the Blue Angels flew at 3PM. To get in, you have to park at Lockheed-Martin and catch a bus to the actual airshow, and the traffic was murderous, so by 2:45 I was nowhere near even the parking lot. I remembered that there was a car dealership on a hill overlooking the base runway, so I drove over there … and found myself in a sea of humanity. The car dealer had essentially shut down business for the day because the crowds had overwhelmed his lot. Street vendors with pushcarts were working the crowd selling ice cream and cold drinks. Incredible! I guess he didn’t have the gendarmes come and clear the lot because it would have been rather bad PR for his business. They weren’t letting any more cars onto the lot, but conveniently, this dealership is a branch of the one where I just bought my car. With the dealer drive-out tag still on, I easily bluffed my way in.
The view from the lot was great, being about a half mile off the end of the runway, and I had almost as much fun as if I’d been on base, but not quite. Since the blues were to fly both days, I resolved to get there much earlier on Sunday.
I called my friend Nicholas, who was keen to go, and I picked him up at 10AM, whereupon we headed right over to the show. We arrived at the parking lot and immediately saw big, flashing electronic signs that said, ‘NO AIRSHOW ACCESS – PARKING LOT FULL’. No problem, we thought. We’ll just park at this shopping center, about a half mile away, and walk to the bus! We noticed a few others doing the same, but just as we were leaving the car, we noticed a few others coming back to theirs! Apparently, the police were not allowing anyone to walk into the bus area … if you weren’t parked in the lot, you weren’t going in!
This time no amount of bluffing would get us past the gung-ho guys with the shaved heads and batons, so we started asking around. Most people seemed to be headed toward a vacant lot which sat at exactly the opposite end of the runway from where I’d been the day before, and much closer. We headed there and found a scene similar to the previous day’s festivities, except that it was in a much better viewing position. We hauled out the lawn chairs, I hosed myself down with a bottle or two of sunscreen, and we set about the business of watching airplanes do amazing things at the hands of amazing people. Dan McClung’s Red Eagle was a highlight, along with great performances by an Air Force F-16 and a Navy F-14. Patty Wagstaff put in her usual jaw-dropping show in the Extra 300. An aging MiG-17 even made a few passes. The redneck crowd was appeased by the appearance of the Jet Truck, a huge truck tractor equipped with a turbojet engine complete with afterburners. It raced a Christen Eagle biplane, and lost.
We had a pretty darned good day, despite my frustration with the airshow people. I heard on the news that they expected 50,000 people each day to attend the show. The parking lot had a capacity of 7,000 cars. So, either they really thought that people would be coming in (on average) seven to a car, or someone is a COMPLETE FRIGGING IDIOT and didn’t even provide parking for the EXPECTED crowd. There was no overflow parking, and they blocked access to anyone not parked in the full lot, so they basically planned to turn away tens of thousands. Idiocy. These, by the way, are the people charged with defending our country? 🙂
Something else occurred to me recently; this while I was in Chicago on a recent business trip. I was driving, semi-lost, down a major thoroughfare when I noticed that I really, really needed to … er … undrink. I noticed a hot dog restaurant up ahead, and since I’d been dying for a good Chicago hot dog, I decided to stop in. I ordered, then asked about the rest room.
“Oh, we have one, but it’s not public. Sorry.” The hot dog lady didn’t actually look too apologetic. No amount of begging or pleading would convince her to allow one such as me, a mere “public”, access to the sacred loo.
This is not an isolated incident. Businesses EVERYWHERE in America have begun putting up signs indicating their unwillingness to accept non-revenue urine, stating, “REST ROOMS ARE FOR CUSTOMER USE ONLY”, but even that’s not enough for some of these people. This hot dog stand wouldn’t even allow a CUSTOMER to make wee-wee!
At a video rental store I used to patronize, I saw something equally appalling. Where the rest room had once been public, one day I found a sign on the door. It said, in its entirety:
WE NO LONGER HAVE A PUBLIC REST ROOM. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. THE MANAGEMENT.
I felt like writing below it:
I USED THE FLOOR. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. THE CUSTOMER.
How wrong is this, really? Seriously, if I have a rest room at my business, and any stranger walks up to my door stating that he’s got to go, and his facial expressions and body language make that abundantly clear, I’m not going to say no! It’s inhuman! This lack of compassion for one’s fellow man really gets under my collar and irritates me, because it’s so callous and so unnecessary. I had plenty of time to think about this, as I quickly wolfed down a couple of hot dogs in about a minute flat … hot dogs I’d rather have enjoyed at my leisure, but couldn’t because I had to quickly jump back in the car and race to the McDonald’s two blocks down and charge into their rest room, striding purposefully past the “customers only” sign and daring anyone to stop me.
As for my general mood, as you can tell (well, if you ignore the last few paragraphs), it’s substantially elevated. Things have been slowly improving along the homefront, and the last couple of days have been very pleasant. It’s too early to say that things will return to “normal”, even if I knew what “normal” was exactly, but any improvement is welcome. Thanks to everyone who reads my drivel for putting up with all my depressing blog-droppings the last couple of weeks!
Oh, and if I hadn’t mentioned it before, my wife is one of the world’s great cooks … last night’s dinner was almost better than sex. Almost.