Tourist Time

 
SEEING THE SIGHTS: We had an out of town friend visit us yesterday and today, and for us that always means Big Fun, because we get to play tourists in our own city.

We went to the Ballard Locks, where I stupidly didn't take any photos. (My excuses: It was cold and raining  and not camera friendly. Or people friendly, for that matter!). In the underground view of the fish ladder, we saw one tiny fingerling. It looked lost and lonely, poor thing. Hope it found a school to join.

Afterward, we felt compelled to take our friend to the Troll under the (Aurora) bridge, because how often do you get to see an 18-foot high, 13,000 pound troll?

From a block away, we could see that the poor troll was heavily graffiti-ed. The "good" news was it was only chalk. ... 

Below, CJ tries to make the Troll sneeze. Fortunately, it didn't work.

 The kids clambered all over him. Fortunately, that didn't bother him, either.

Our troll-visit timing was great. We had the Big Guy to ourselves for a whole 5 minutes before a tour bus and other car loads of people showed up. 

Since the weather was craptacular, we skipped some of the other obvious tourist spots and headed for our favorite indoor attraction - The Museum of Flight. 

As always, we spotted plenty of new points of interest, and revisited some favorite spots. 

CJ and Annabelle love to go around the WWII exhibit and look for the interactive radios stationed in a few places. Their favorite is the one by the Corsair. One of its "stations" plays Bing Crosby's "White Christmas."

Annabelle spent some time studying this poster today. She noted that a roll and a spin are identical maneuvers, just on different axis. She also would have preferred a roll be called a barrel roll, as it is in one of her favorite video games, "Star Fox 64."

CJ tells me that in Star Fox 64, when you do a 'barrel roll,' you're not actually doing a 'barrel roll,' you're executing an aileron roll.   Important distinction, as in an aileron roll, the plane does a  360° revolution about its longitudinal axis, not changing altitude appreciably. With a barrel roll, there's 360-degrees of rotation, but it's on a helical path.  

Today, we spent more time checking out the (many, many) video monitors around the museum. Here, Annabelle was learning about the two types of pilots in The Great War - the quick, and the dead. Pretty sobering stuff for a Monday afternoon. Or any afternoon, for that matter.

And while the planes are the jaw-droppers, there is so much more to look at too. here, we checked out photos and viewers pilots used in WWI for navigation and identifying targets. 

We also ogled a number of engines. Not necessarily the flashiest part of the plane, but oh-so-important. 

And I just love pretty props - not to mention nosecones. Check out the lovely 'face' of this plane.

Annabelle enjoyed operating the prop on this model of a Nieuport 28 C.1

And I'll never get tired of admiring the lovely framework of this lovely Curtiss JN-4D Jenny. The lovely specimen at the museum was a heap o' parts when purchased by a Friday Harbor couple in 1982. 9,500 man hours later, it was restored from vintage plans, using materials and methods of the era (1917). 

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH: We're still working on the pony mural. Annabelle helped paint the sky this weekend.