Last Friday we went to the Carolinas Aviation Museum. Believe it or not, this humble little museum, tucked away by the airport, houses the Miracle on the Hudson. I did not expect to be so touched by seeing it, but it brought tears to my eyes. There was a great volunteer there, who heard Colin talking about some other airplanes he learned about on a field trip there, and he jumped on Colin’s enthusiam, trailing us for most of our trip and explaining things. He talked to us about the passengers of Flight 1549 standing on the front wings as they evacuated, and pointed out some dents towards the front of the plane from bird strikes. It was just amazing to see this beast of a plane, broken up in so many areas, and know that it is broken up in just the right ways to have landed without anyone inside dying.
There was a movie playing, and the two oldest boys really got into it. As we were looking at the plane and watching the movie, I felt this sinking feeling and thought, “Uh, maybe it wasn’t a good idea for the kids to see this less than a week before we fly across the country.” Carina was getting super fussy during the movie and we needed to leave, but I stayed until the plane landed safely because I wanted them to have the last images of safety stuck in their heads.
There were a lot of really neat airplanes there – I am sure someone who knows more about that kind of stuff would enjoy it even more than I did. I had to take a picture of Colin in front of a Concorde model because he used to be obsessed with it. And I the picture of Ollie is in front of what he calls a “Surfjack.”
Just a note, if you do go, the hangar that houses all these cool planes is not air-conditioned and it gets hotter in there than it does outside. We went right when the museum opens at ten, and we were sweating.
