We’re heading back to VT today.. Our flight was from Dulles airport. Yesterday we foudn out that there are really two air and space museums.. One at the smithsonian on the DC Mall.. the other is right next to Dulles airport. We realized that we had a full  30 minutes to visit the museum  on our way to make our floght. We even talked our Uber driver to coming in with us. !

It was well worth the visit. They had an SR71 blackbird spy plane (made of titanium).. and the real space shuttle Discovery  !

 

We said good bye to our super cool uber guy and he dropped us off at the airport…  

Turns out my good freind Liggy was on the plane .. and he wsa seated next to diane. She swapped seats with me wich gave liggy and me a chance to catch up. He’s  a lighting buddy of mine..   and a really great guy !

 

We got to BTVV>. diane headed home.. and SHannon and the rest of us headed over to the South 40.. the new Beta manufacturing building. tonight was a public event to thank local supporters. Our good freidn Crawford had gotten our demos over there and ready to go.. (Thanks Crawford !!)

The event was really fun.. music, food trucks and lots of happy vistors. !>. the building is so huge and amazing ! We had a huge aper airplane contest from the balcony !

AFter teh event we had a good time cleaning up !

Long fun day !

nite all. nite sam
-me

First order of business today was a trip to the College Park Air Museum in . We are looking at how we might work together on how to teach the public about aviation. The air field at college park was one of the oldest public airfield. 

The museum had a really amazing collection of vitage planes.. including a wright brothers flyer !

 

We had a good meetign witht he staff on possible collaborations.. then headed back to DC. 
after a quick lunch we headed to the air and space museum . Our goal was to get some  ideas  for our own demonstrations. Much of the museum was closed for renovations.. That turned out to be soemthign of a blassing as there was so much to see there. 

They had an amazing exhibit on early flight includign a ton of original wright brothers gear !

 

The museum had some great interactives and live science guy !

 

Even a crop duster from tiny monroe lousiana.. where my aunt Brig gre3w up after she and her mother escaped from a nazi concentration camp in WWII.

Next stop was the DC children’s museum . Shannon had arrainged a meetign with the staff . Our goal was to understand some of their first principles sceince demos for younger kids. We got a cooks tour of the place.. I was very imrpressed with all the interactivity. 

 

we’d had a great tour !.. lots of good ideas we can use. 

We walked back to the Beta site  by way of the white house…. 

 

We spent a few more hours in set up of our demos… 

 

it had been a fun and uesful day,.. 
nite all, nite sam
-me 

We spent most of the day down in Beta’s DC office installing the 4 demos we’d driven down. Can’t show that./ but it was a fun and busy day moving, unpacking,  installing. it felt good to get these demos in place. 
we rolled  the  mobile  ones  in during the morning   then had to leave the office while they held a client meeting. During the 2 hour berak we made a quick visit to the Spy museum .. It was fantastic !

then back to teh office to unload the big demo.. It was more than 400 pounds . Luckily Aaron was  a pro  with the forklift we rented

 

THe installation went faster than we’d planned.. but takign apart the crate took more time than we’d thoguht. By the time we finished it was abotu 7PM.
We headed out for Ethipian food that we’d all been thinking about all day

It was a great meal with gerat freinds. We were so gfull that we decided to walk home.. about 45 minutes.. we walked thoguht the Mall .. whcih was beutiful at night !

 

I was really moved by the Lincoln Memorial .. his features.. his expression.. and his words.. they seemed to be as relavent today as when he spoke them

we walked the length of the mall to the WWII monument. 

we went by the capital whcih is now heavily barricaded. 

 

Then back to the airbnb to sleep. We had more to do tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

I met. my friend and coworker Shannon at 8AM this morning to load up a bunch  of demos we are taking down to our colleagues in our DC office. We were doing this in prep for an event they are hosting. 

We had a rented Uhaul box truck absolutely packed with demo motors, batteries and model planes. It was a 10-ish hour drive down to DC… shannon drove about 2/3 of the time.. I drove about 1/3. It was fun talking and listenign to music.. We made good time and only stopped twice. By 7Pm-ish we were down in DC.  Our good friend Aaron had flown down from Montreal and he came and met us.. .. and our friend Matthew came to drop Diane by. Diane was in DC hanging out with Matthew, his wife Caroline, their daughter Anna .. and Matthews mom Kate.   It was a fun moment of crossing multiple friend streams !

 

Long day.. but pretty fun !

nite all, nite sam

-me