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The trip I was on was very short. We were flying from DC<br />

to Kennedy Space Center for a speech President obama was<br />

giving.<br />

During the flight, I had been helping to work and rework<br />

a speech the President was about to give. He kept coming<br />

out of his cabin with more edits and changes. After another<br />

round of edits from the boss, an attendant looked at me and<br />

asked if I needed anything. I jokingly said, "Yes, a nice strong<br />

drink. Preferably a single malt," (it was about nine or ten in<br />

the morning). Without pausing the attendant asks, "What<br />

brand and what year?" I had to tell him I was joking.<br />

In addition to my colleagues and a few members of Congress,<br />

we also had Buzz Aldrin on the flight. Dr. Aldrin was<br />

seated next to me at our table and he starts to get a bit fidgety,<br />

he looks around, and he says, "You wanna go take a look<br />

around?"<br />

So I stop working for a minute and Dr. Aldrin and I start<br />

checking out AF1. We make it over to the stairs that lead to<br />

the upper deck and cockpit and one of the staff members asks<br />

if we want to head upstairs and check out the cockpit. Dr.<br />

Aldrin got a big smile on his face and looked at me. We were<br />

both smiling like little kids. Did we want to see the cockpit of<br />

AF1? Seriously? You have to ask?<br />

So Dr. Aldrin and I make it up to the flight deck and all<br />

of the Air Force officers are in awe of this moon walker and<br />

here's Buzz Aldrin happy as a little kid because he's hanging<br />

out in the cockpit of AF1. Dr. Aldrin goes into the cockpit,<br />

and I stand outside of it with my head sticking through the<br />

doorway. So here I am, essentially a nobody and I'm hanging<br />

out in the cockpit of AF1, with the pilots, while AF1 is in<br />

flight, and I'm with Buzz Aldrin. Somewhere back in time,<br />

the ten year old version of me was saying, "You have got to be<br />

kidding me . . . "<br />

It was way too short of a flight.<br />

But just a couple of more interesting bits.<br />

First, as we started to descend, I instinctively went back to<br />

my seat and buckled up. But I noticed a lot of the other "frequent<br />

flyers" were still up and walking around. So I asked one<br />

of them, "When are we supposed to sit down?" They just kind<br />

of laughed at my "noob question" and said something to the ef-<br />

267

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