11-24-2023 Entry

No ride on this day, my legs needed a break.  Instead, I took a longer walk, then went to the WWC for a swim, 2250 yds in about 48 minutes.  After I got home, I got cleaned up, then Laura and I drove downtown to go to the Midway museum.  I don't think either one of us anticipated how crowded it would be, either for the traffic (gridlock by the Midway parking) or the number of people at the museum.  In any case, we parked close to Seaport Village and walked about 8 minutes to the Midway, then after something of a delay (not too bad) we got into the museum.  It was all decked out in Christmas theme, which was pretty corny (Laura found it really annoying).  The main hangar deck contained many early planes (including some from WWII, even though the Midway didn't see action there) and included a display about its role in evacuating people from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.  Later on, when we were on the flight deck, we watched a presentation from a former pilot of AWACs planes on the difficulties of landing a plane on a carrier.  Really excellent, he was a very good speaker.  Then he introduced Vern Jumper, who was the Air Boss on the Midway during Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of civilians from Saigon.  Vern talked about those days and shared some cool pictures from that time, again really interesting.  We walked around the flight deck and listened to the audio self-tour, which was pretty decent.  By that time, we were getting closer to the limit for parking, so we headed back downstairs and started on the belowdecks tour before realizing we didn't have enough time to complete it.  So we turned around and headed back out.  A good museum, still a fair amount to see that we didn't get to.  Maybe one day I'll go down there and take my time going through the rest of it on a less busy day.  Good lunch of leftovers at home after we got back, then it was a quiet afternoon and evening.