Days 4 & 5: Smog, Spanglish and the Biggest airplane EVAH
April 2, 2008 | South to Santiago
SANTIAGO, Chile — Santiago is like Los Angeles or perhaps Mexico City. There’s a lot of smog here and it’s trapped (not like Smaug the dragon from the Hobbit, either). As the city lies in a valley surrounded by high peaks, the smog generated by the millions of cars here gets trapped. So, the only thing that could allieviate that is a good rain. And there’s none due. The smog is hell on my lungs right now, especially after the bout with the illness. So, I’ve got the persistant cough going every day. I need a humdifer and 7,213 Halls cough drops.
FIDAE 2008 rolls on with the US Air Force! Our B-1 bombers have rolled overhead twice in demonstration flights. Our F-15E Strike Eagles, too. Today, the F-16 soared and did it’s thing. All great stuff. Our people have shown off their jets and taken them around every airplane we’ve bought. They are fantastic, especially under the conditions, which are dry and hot. And the air show, really, hasn’t started. Usually, the weekdays for any airshow are for press, and other special groups, (like Make-A-Wish, who we hosted Tuesday). The actual show days are expected to bring hundreds of thousands and that will be a big win for us.
My Spanish/Portuguese, what little I know, has been getting a workout and it seems to be improving. Rule No. 1 about traveling to countries: if you can use the language, use it. It’s appreciated. Fortunately, we have a lot of folks who speak the language and can be found easily to help out. You can sometimes get by with a mix of English and Spanish, too. Interesting: this is one of the countries I’ve visited where you really can’t get by with a lot of English, like Germany, France or some others I have visited. That’s probably because Chile is realtively untouched (from my naive point of view) by American influences, save some television and movies. In any case, it’s good to be trying the languages again. And, in some ways, it’s refreshing that the ALL American influence hasn’t come this far
The band we’ve brought with us is fantastic. On Day 4, the Air National Guard Band of the Central States had a four-person acoustic band play inside our C-17 while we brought children in from Make-A-Wish. And they were fantastic. They were pitch perfect, had the kids (and the ambassador to Chile) involved. All great stuff. Beforehand, I met one of the guitarists (and don’t have his name yet). Earlier, one of the bandsmen told me when this kid auditioned, he R-O-C-K-E-D. An unbelievable audition. So, when I bumped into him, I just hanged back and watched him play. And then we started talking about influences and guitar players. We had a lot of influences in common (George Lynch, Steve Vai and so on). So, he also knew a Triumph song or two, including “Magic Power” and I found myself singing the entire opening of the thing out loud in front of about 40 people. When Icaught myself, I turned red, walked away and decided to leave the professional playing to them. 
We managed to put 11 reporters onto one of our KC-135s. We put them on their to show how our refuelers can refuel Chilean F-16s and they did that today. I was the “reporter wrangler” today. Rule No. 1 about reporters and flights: expect them to be late. Rule 1a: At least 30 minutes late. Rule 1b: expect more after that. The problem is that the KC-135 can’t be late. When we asked folks to be ready to go at 10 a.m., we meant 10 a.m. But I knew better, waited until about 10:10 a.m., then started handing out seats to other reporters.
Guess what? About 30 minutes later, the other reporters started calling and/or showing up. So, I have to take away seats I’d given away. And so on. It’s difficult people management, but it got done. Then the briefing about flying and they were off. The positive effects of the flight: as mentioned above, showing the cooperation and, of course, a smooth flight.
Finally, it wouldn’t be an international air show without a note about the A380 Airbus. I haven’t delved into this yet because the days are long and tiring and the A380 hadn’t really clicked on my radar. Today, it did. Umm, Wow. That’s a HUGE airplane. And to see it fly is an unbelievable achivement. More importantly, people talk about it incessantly. “Do you know how many it can hold?” “Know what’s inside?” “Can you believe that thing can fly?” It’s done two flying demos. And, yeah, it’s an airliner, but it does this amazing steep angle ascent then turns and you swear it’s going to fall out of the sky. But it just keeps climbing and goes. And, no kidding, every head on the flight line is watching it go. Every single one of them. The Airbus rocks.
I’ll be flying on Day 6 and should have more photos to share. Also, Saturday, our military guys will be playing against Chilean little leaguers in a baseball game. Oh. And I’ve taken a roommate — a reporter. More on that in the next entry.
