D-Day

Written by Daddy

Sunday October 12th 2008; Kristen was sick and needed a well deserved day of rest. I knew my mission. I had to get the kids fed and dressed and out the door, not to mention the same task for Brad, Stacey and Andy. The latter was more of a daunting and time consuming task for me. I kid.

Reconnaissance Mission One was to observe miniature aircraft activity over Tom Sawyer Park. There is a little airstrip (by little I mean a driveway) off of Hurstbourne Lane where old Navy Has-beens and remote control wanna-be pilots gather to play with their middle aged toys. These guys took this very serious; they each had clearly invested a lot of time and money in this pastime. When we arrived half a dozen were already on the ground going through their pre-flight inspections. And then one by one they’d taxi on to the tarmac and take flight. Cooper about locked up and Andy wet himself a little in all the excitement. ViviAnne of course only cared about the pink plane. It takes a big man to show up in this arena with a pink plane, but even a bigger man to laugh at him when it crashes into the tree line. Unfortunately, Vivianne’s favorite plane was last seen being loaded into the back of an SUV in several pieces. It was no secret that this little excursion was focused more on the three adult men in our squadron. But the kids loved it as well. They were perfect angels patiently waiting the next flight.

Our next mission was clear, so we loaded up the team and headed to HobbytownUSA. The rules were clear and even more clearly ignored. NO TOUCHING! Upon entering the door Cooper somehow managed to run in three directions muttering, “I Get!, I Get!, I Get!” ViviAnne fixated on a pair of toy binoculars or “Schelesopes”. We managed to escape significant collateral damage and left the store. Andy bought a small Styrofoam RC Plane that boasts a wing span of about 5 inches. ViviAnne dubbed this piece of aeronautic engineering “Andy’s Cute Plane”. Daddy prefers to go down in flames and splurged on a more man sized aircraft. The kids didn’t seem to mind that these where crackerjack trinkets compared to what we had witnessed earlier.

Back at Gramma and PawPaw’s, “Andy’s Cute Plane” saw about 60 seconds of airtime before a slight breeze hurled it into the top of a tree; the very top. Under the careful supervision and direction of ViviAnne, a spool of fishing line, a lead weight, 60 feet of rope and 1.5 hours, later we managed to dislodge the flying BigMac container from the tree with minimal carnage.
“The Man Plane” took a painstaking 3 hours to charge. After a 3 minute preflight video on CDROM, ViviAnne, Andy and I were experts. Stacey gave ViviAnne another controller so she could pretend to be at the stick. The maiden voyage included 10 feet of ascent, 20 yards of travel and a mid-air collision with the nearest tree branch. After carefully surveying the damaged wing and loss of landing gear, the executive decision was made to push our luck and return to the air. The next flight was a little more successful with a fly-by over the house before we lost sight and contact. Our new found hobby had quickly become a rogue unmanned missile and no cow or horse in a quarter mile range was safe.

Andy and I took to the great wild of Oldham County to recover the wreckage. We climbed barbed wire fences and dredged through the thorns of undergrowth of adjacent properties to rescue our fallen comrade. With the sun and our hope of “not leaving a man behind” setting we started to head back toward Gramma’s feeling defeated. We’d all but given up when we heard the whine of a 9-volt engine crying out for help. We actually had to go back, get the car and drive to where heard the sound. With our pride and a large remote control in our hands we knocked on a farm house door. Luckily no one answered and we scampered around the house to find our plane in one piece and hurried back to headquarters.

My little fighter pilots were exhausted by this point but glad to see that we had survived to fly another day. We returned home and debriefed Mommy on our mission accomplished. The perfect Daddy Day; no work, no chemo, no boo-boos, and no structure, we literally went were ever the wind took us. It was a great day that I will never forget.