Attention Earthlings!
 

I’ve finally located my lost spaceship. I plan to go back and steal it tonight, after the air museum closes. 😎😁😎

I’m taking a little yogurt break, in Winton, after climbing that long grade up to Castle airfield. There’s a lot of cool stuff there, you could easily spend a day looking around. 👍

It’s “only” going up to 76 F today here, a veritable deep-freeze after hitting 98 F 2 or 3 days ago. 😁😉
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Is that an SR-71 Blackbird? Fastest manned aircraft ever flown? What's it doing there, looks like the military discarded it.

I have driven past that airfield many times, but never visited. I recall driving past during the Cold War, and seeing how they always had at least one B-52 bomber, already in the air, circling the airfield, "just in case".

Nice to know they have a Space Port.

Looks like an SR-71. Coolest plane ever. Saw one up close in Washington DC in a Smithsonian museum. They stopped flying them years ago(90's?) supposedly due to high maintenance costs..from what I remember. More likely, the fix was in for a new plane and there was too much money to be made, and jobs perhaps, to keep the older bird flying..

Another fave is the A-10 Warthog. They keep trying to retire it..but then some event happens and it fills the need better than anything else.

Geez, they've got everything but the Stuka Dive Bomber at that place: https://www.castleairmuseum.org/collection

That’s why I said, you could easily spend the day there. 😁 There are literally hundreds of planes and choppers, I bet, behind that sign & partially visible plane. It was tough finding a place to stop with a bike, is why the pics are kinda weird. Lots of traffic there, & not much of a berm to ride on.

That was the main gist of my intended humor, lol. 😁 I wanted to post something cool like “Attention all planets of the Solar Federation, we have assumed control!”, but that’s too long for a thread title. 😁😎😉

I think I got it. I read the thread title, in the voice of the alien, from this classic Brownsville Station tune from BIDT: :lol:

man you said it, and a surprising number of large aircraft like b17, b24 b29, heck even a b36
a lot of aircraft you dont see much
looks like an outdoor exhibit, so probably why they dont have the more sought after classics like mustangs, spitfires etc as being outside in the elements, they go for clapped out ones that they can get inexpensively and I imagine they do paintjobs and not too too much more other than essential structural work. I also imagine it doesnt rain all that much there? So not too much rotting away?

but really impressed by the scale and number of the multiengine stuff

and yes, dont see SR71's on every street corner--the nose looks different on that one doesnt it? I thought they all had a hinge nose thing going on?

thanks Mr Cheech
an appropriate flying high topic ;-)

Kind gives short shrift to the X-15 (Mach 6.5) and the Space Shuttle (Mach 25 in atmosphere!), but yes fastest publicly-acknowledged air-breathing aircraft

There were dozens of SR-71 airframes when the plane was retired; they ended up in air museums all over the place

rip neil.

Castle Air Force Base is closed, isn't it? I stopped by the air museum quite a few years ago when the base was still active, intending to do a short walk-around. Ended up spending 4-5 hours checking out all the cool stuff. They have just about everything you'd expect in military aircraft there. The SR-71 was there at that time, but the windows and undercarriage openings (wheel wells, etc) were covered up to prevent inside views. Anyway, that's a really impressive place and glad to see its still open.

Back onto that topic, are we? 😎😁😎 Check this out, man. I found a little glass jar yesterday afternoon, marked Ice Cream Kush, which still had a couple bowls in it. Which was pretty good weed. 😎 Then this morning, I found a $20 bill, which is almost as good as free weed. 🤔😁😉

I’m not even close to running out, but it’s hard to turn down free stuff like that, on the way. 😁😉

didnt plan to, but just couldnt resist when the flying high thought popped in my head
pretty cool air museum though, for those of us who were into planes their collection is really impressive

We also rode by Castle Air Museum a few years ago, and being an ex-military pilot there was not any way we were going to just ride by.
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A little later that day was in urgent care in Merced getting patched up.
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Dang dude, did you let a dog catch you or something? 😲 I realize it’s too straight for that, just don’t have any good guesses. 🤔

Hey, does anyone have experience with CA-130, going from Patterson over the mountains to San Jose? 🤔 I’m in Patterson now, lol, so I’ll probably just go on across. 🙄😁😉

ha, and I actually for a second thought he was asking if anyone had flying experience in Hercules's !
plane thinking still activated.

Doug, that must have been really really neat being there.

and yes, that damn photo still always makes me wince like there's no tomorrow!

Actually, it was in the back of my leg just below the calf. The old army doc at clinic sewed it up, with a "baseball" stitch, so it wouldn't impede cycling, and it really was not painful. After sharing a few stories, he wished us a good ride, and wouldnt take any payment.

I was wearing my running shoes on the way to dinner, and my foot slipped off the clipless pedal when I had to do an emergeny maneuver. The pedal caught me in the back of the leg. It could have been worse.

“Tis nothing but a scratch. Come back and fight, you coward!!!”. Remember the Black Knight? 😁

I think I’m gonna change my mind, on route 130. 5 or 10 miles through the mountains can be rough at times, and this is more like 70 miles, with no services. 🤔 I guess I’m just getting spoiled, but I like my coffee in the mornings. 😁😉

So I decided to take route 33 North, and in spite of a windy day, I’m in the Southern suburbs of Tracy now. It was pretty uneventful, except for Doris the Duck. 😁

The first time I saw her, she had 4 ducklings with her, swimming up this irrigation canal. It seemed like she told them to dive underwater, which they did, but then she started following me, both flying and swimming, without the ducklings. 🤔 She also started flying way ahead of me, then swimming back to me, kinda like ravens like to play. And she did that for at least a mile, maybe 2.

I don’t know just what she was thinking, first I thought just worried about her babies, but why would she follow me so far, instead of just staying with them? 🤔 Weird.
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Sounds like typical bird behavior, like the "pretend to have a broken wing and struggle along, drawing predator away from offspring" routine.

In the words of Grucho Marx, "Why a duck?" Looks like you have a duck in a viaduct. :roflmao:

Excellent horizon views, the Central Valley has some really dramatic clouds sometimes. Do you have a destination? If you like the Central Valley, you'll love the Carizzo Plain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrizo_Plain

In 1990 I was in a crowded restaurant in a high-rise building as the SR-71 was finishing up it's official LA-DC record run--sonic boom rattled the windows but the clueless bozos didn't even notice that. Previous day I had read a small article in the newspaper announcing the run.

Now there’s a loaded question. 😁😉 I was thinking of cutting across the mountains, to San Jose, on 130, back in Patterson. A couple people advised against it, because it’s not that much further, to just go up here to Tracy, then West. And looking at the map, I believed them. Plus there’s that little issue of food & coffee. 😉
No sense doing everything the hard way.

EDIT: I forgot to say, but that San Joaquin River goes right near Patterson, so I jumped in it again yesterday. 😁 2 baths in a week, I’m getting spoiled. 🙄😁😉

Hate to be the one to tell you, but you have just toured all of the very worst parts of CA. On either side of you, you have the Sierras and the Pacific Ocean, and to the north is also very nice. I would say you can't go wrong at this point. My unsolicited advice would be, to avoid the Bay Area if possible, and find a way to the coast or to the (real) mountains ASAP.

Are you wearing that enormous backpack while riding that loaded bike? That can't be comfortable.