June 19, 2009

Like a kid in a candy store...

Joe had one of the "coolest experiences" of his life on Wednesday this week. For those of you who may not know him very well, he is REALLY into airplanes and jets. He talks to me (or anyone else who will listen) about them constantly, even though I have no idea what he's talking about. In addition, one of his best buddies, Justin Davis, is in the Air Force and tells Joe about his adventures all of the time.

So a couple of weeks ago when the Seahawks went down to Ft. Lewis to train with the soldiers Joe was super pumped. However, he was somewhat disappointed when he came home because his day was predominantly spent speaking to elementary school kids. He admitted it was important and a good thing to do, but part of him was sad he didn't get to spend the day checking out man-sized toys (AKA fighter jets). In comes the silver lining... some of the officers at Ft. Lewis felt bad that some of the guys like Joe didn't get a play day at the fort, so they offered for them to come back for a personal flight and tour. Talk about a dream come true for someone like Joe. Here are some pics from his big day...

Joe's ride for the day- a refueling tanker for the US Air Force (same thing that Justin does in Qatar)

Um, they're really, really big

Can't they just use auto-pilot?

The view from Joe's plan- an F-15 fighter jet flying by, no big deal

What's cooler than one F-15 on your flank? Two

Flying just above an F-15

The bottom of the tankers have windows, so you can see out (pretty sweet)

The probe on the left needs to be hooked up to the gas tank on the F-15... (Joe said it is really hard to connect, and the pilots are cussing the whole time trying to line it up)

They did it!

A zoomed in shot

3 comments:

nicole said...

SOOOOO cool!! i think i'd pee my pants but it looks awesome

JNew said...

WOW! I bet that Joe was 'quivering' with excitement the whole time. That looks pretty rad.

dabs&william said...

WOW that is amazing! So cool of Joe to get that opportunity...I bet he'll be talking about it forever!