Field Trip

I was waiting to download the pictures of this field trip before I blogged about it, sadly, all the pictures were blurry, of only a slice of someone's face, or both. So, I'll just write a little bit about it.

Friday, our field trip group went to check out Air St. Luke's, one of the local airborne medical transport companies. This was a great field trip. The staff were incredibly friendly and welcoming (which is pretty great considering more than a few were in the middle of a 24 hr shift). Gave us a pretty casual, but informative, tour of their facilities and one of their helicopters. The kids were able to crawl into the patient compartment, where an EMT talked to them about what happened there; and then the pilot showed them around the cockpit (each kid got to sit in the pilot seat for a few minutes). And unlike other field trips we've been on--no one seemed concerned the kids would break anything (considering we're talking a $7 million aircraft, that's pretty impressive). Then, on a whim, they took them over to the ambulance and another EMT talked them through that. All the kids had a blast--which was good considering the gray, cloudy, almost rainy mid-50's morning it was.

While the kids were checking out the helicopter, the other pilot called me over and asked me if I wanted to look at the engine. I have no idea why this happens to me (okay, not true, I know exactly why--I'm generally the only man in the group). Last year at the PBS station, the engineers called me over to look at a control panel none of the other parents/kids saw. This time it was the engine (looks smaller and wimpier than my wife's Mercury Villager's--which just made it all the more impressive, IMHO). While he was showing me the bonus stuff we were able to talk about homeschooling--the pilot's moving soon and there aren't any private school options like he enjoys where he is--challenges, benefits, regulations, etc. So we were both able to get something out of the day (I hope I helped him anyway).