(a continuation of My Few Moments in the Bright Sun)
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t ever been in Washington D.C. before. I had spent considerable time there on several earlier assignments which had been memorable experiences. I had smoked my pack of Marlboros in my suite on the top floor (the 14th only because of east coast superstition of 13th floors) of the Water Gate hotel before its notoriety. Back then airlines handed out packs of Marlboros. I would sit up there in evenings alone watching Marlboro commercials and wishing I was back home on our ranch riding Bridle Star, who would later become the foundation mare of our horse racing operation.
On some other occasions Kay had traveled with me. We had also stayed at the Water Gate on one of the occasions and in the evenings and on weekends we would tour the sights, the monuments, and the several Smithsonian museums as well as canoeing on the Potomac.
So when Perry said, “Let’s have some fun in Washington,” it was hardly a foreign concept to me. But it would be different than any other experience I had had in Washington and a lot more fun than when Kay and I were there during the ‘Burn Baby Burn’ trauma in the US.
After the man across the table got up and left, Perry asked me if I had ever met the man back at Boeing. No. I hadn’t. “Well,” he began, “He’s one hell of a pilot. He saved my life once.” He pondered a bit before adding, “If he hadn’t landed on that little strip of grass right when he did, I wouldn’t be here.” He proceeded with, “I had broken into Malenkov’s summer estate on the Black Sea…” I can’t remember the details; he mentioned a situation in which he snatched something or other and “took the tail of his polar bear”[?] and scooted the hell out of there, and just as he ran onto the strip of grass, whatever the guy’s name was who had sat across from us this morning lowered that plane at precisely the right moment; Perry hopped in and they were off with whatever Russians were following him left in the lurch. “You can never trust a Russian unless he’s at the business end of a gun.” I remember that part and wondered about it. I was being entertained but I didn’t have any idea what was true and what was just so Perry could see my eyes widen. I don’t know what to believe.
Our hotel was in Alexandria (Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington) and when we walked out the front door, Perry said, “Let’s just go up here before we take the underground into the mall.” So we walked up a steep street a block or two until we came to a multistory building and Perry and I went in. There wasn’t hardly anyone in the lobby and he walked directly to the elevator and up we went. I don’t know how many floors. The doors opened on a hallway something like a hotel, but rather than numbers there were names on the doors. I remember one was Holliday Inn, but I realized the names must have been codes. He had a key for one of the doors and we walked in. It was a large room full of desks in disarray with papers strewn around. Perry walked over to the desk in the corner and opened a drawer. He picked up a stapler and put it in his pocket.
“This is where my transition team redid the budget for the DoD [Department of Defense].”
“Oh!” I didn’t say it, but I’m thinking about Perry’s prolonged absence from his Boeing office. So he was on Ronald Reagan’s transition team. Bush had probably recommended him, I figured and pondered whether Perry ever related his financial efforts on a transition team and the miracle he was trying to pull off for the Transition Machine. Hmm.
He strolled around the room for a bit, obviously full of thoughts before saying, “Well, let’s get over to the mall.”
I don’t know where in Alexandria we were located exactly, but we came to an access to the underground with an escalator that went down a longways. The Wheaton station has a 230 ft. escalator that is the longest single span escalator in the entire western hemisphere. Perry told me that this was either the longest or second longest in the world, citing one in Moscow as also very long. So we got on the train and ended up at the mall somewhere near the Smithsonian Space museum.
I don’t particularly enjoy aerospace museums. I worked on the self-test software for the lunar lander – the thing that said “NO_GO!” but was ignored as they landed on the moon. I analyzed the inertial guidance system for the Lunar Rover and worked other space missions including Voyager and the Grand Tour, But somehow, although I was an engineer and had been my entire career, I did not associate closely with engineering achievements, transition machines being the exception. It is the theories of physics that enthrall me, not applications.
I asked Perry if he was familiar with the other Smithsonian museums – the natural history and the art museums across the mall. I don’t think he was, but game for anything, we headed across the mall to the sights that most interest me, Dinosaur bones and Monets. We (well, at least I) had a great afternoon.
That was the fun and entertainment we had that day in Washington D.C. Tuesday we would get back on schedule.
To be continued.
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