Doh!

In the hustle and bustle of things, I forgot to bring my camera with me to Ohio. Sucks, but oh well. I don’t feel comfortable including my family into this blog, so it’s just as well.

What you missed – the National Aviation Hall of Fame. My uncle was being honored today, and inducted as a Fellow. Everyone got super dressed up (every one of us guys had a rented tux), and the banquet was held inside the museum itself. Despite some rough patches travelling with the family, it was a really enjoyable time, once we got to the banquet part of the day.

The setting was pretty damn incredible. We were seated at fancy tables, which were situated in one of the main museum areas. This means we were in an enormous airplane hangar, with ENORMOUS airplanes all around us, some parked on the ground and some suspended in the air.

Here’s what the program says about my uncle, regarding his induction:

For significant contributions in unsteady transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic aerodynamic theory and development leading to a unified unsteady aerodynamics/aeroelastic software system now widely practiced in aerospace industry for flight vehicle design/anaylsis.

Whew! I got a brief translation, but still some pretty heady stuff. My uncle is also a professor at Arizona State, and of the coworkers and colleagues I spoke with… everyone had nothing but glowing praise when his name came up.

Oh, and get this – Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were in attendance at this shindig. I was going to try to get a photo opp with them, but ended up leaving early with my sister (so we could get back to Indianapolis on time). Dang!

But! But! Check this shit out. I was flipping through the program and, near the back, I found this:

You better bet your sweet ass I was on the lookout for the T-man. No such luck though. But damn – that would have made for a very memorable blog entry, no? :)

Around 10 PM, my sister and I said our goodbyes and headed back to Indianapolis. I needed to get to work Wednesday morning (Justin and Ben are both off-site for business), so we had to leave early.