Bill and Kit’s Excellent Adventure Chapter 17

The Bill and Kit Excellent Adventure Journal-Issue #17

Friday, February 20, 2009:

After a very enjoyable visit to the Austin, Texas area we are off once again. Heading south for San Antonio for a few days stay at the Lackland Air Force Base campground. Need to do laundry, visit the commissary and Post Exchange and prepare for our westward advance.

The campground is on the edge of the main base, reasonable and very convenient. We set up for the night, took a walk and turned in early. In February of 1976 while being transferred across country we stayed at Kelly AFB (now a part of Lackland AFB) for only $2.00 per night…..this go around the fee is $22.00.

Saturday, February 21, 2009: Now Lackland is a very large Air Force training base. It is made up of three interconnected bases…..Lackland Basic Military Training Facility (boot camp), Lackland Main Base and Kelly Field (flight training).

The Post Exchange is very large and was laid out like a shopping mall, their electronics department would rival most Best Buy stores and the commissary looks like any Hannaford or Shaws complete with a full service deli.

The base is named after a very effective Air Force method of acquiring funds from congress for a base. The way Air Force base development works is that they build all the golf courses, clubs, recreational fields, swimming pools and barracks. Then when the congressional folks come to tour their new base they ask “Where are the runways, hangers and control towers?” At which time the Air Force facilities guys say “couldn’t build them…..we lack land”. So another round of funding is procured to complete the base.

Kit was able to catch up on our e-mail and read our hometown papers online. As I mentioned previously we are traveling with a Verizon Air Card to receive broadband internet access wherever there is Verizon connectivity, which has been everywhere we have traveled so far. This set up has served us very well and even allows us to research information on our intended destination while moving along down the road. I guess this all came to mind because our 5.0 GB monthly allotment of service was reset this morning…..and we only used 1.55 GB of capacity over the past month. That is pretty good considering that Kit has the thing running for hours every day.

Being close to the runway we were treated to day long flights of C-5 Galaxy aircraft with what we guess are piloted by trainees. They circle the area for hour after hour practicing take offs and landings. Usually there are 3 or 4 in the air at any given time.

These heavy lifters fly very slow and at times appear to be suspended in mid air.

C-5 Galaxy

See…..you can’t even see that one move, can you?

Due to the miracle of modern computers and the aforementioned Verizon Air Card we were able to watch our grandson Joe and his Brunswick High School Varsity Hockey team play Mesalonski High School over the Renegade Network. Other than the fact that we were in shorts and t-shirts and it was 76 degrees…..it was like sitting at the new hockey arena on the campus of Bowdoin College.

Brunswick won 4 to 3…..go Dragons!

Sunday, February 22, 2009: I decided to take a bike ride around the various bases to see what there was to see. I had noticed some aircraft on display when we arrived and headed in that general direction. As it turned out the planes were arranged around the graduation parade grounds creating a fitting backdrop to the recruit graduations held there weekly. The vintage aircraft basically created an outdoor air museum.

Bill Tucker - Lackland Air Force Base

Here are a few of the planes surrounding the very large parade field:

I particularly liked the “nose art”…..couldn’t get away with most of that today. The first picture is a modern graphic on an A-10 to honor the hero’s of 9-11.