Welcome to Stringfield

After owning the minivan for less than a week, Regina and I packed the kids up and headed north to Springfield, Mass., the home of Regina's youngest nephew. He attends the New England College of Beer where he studies enginering and it was time to visit the lad and his girlfriend, the eternally-patient Theresa. We had a ball. We stayed at a Residence Inn which came with two bedrooms, a full kitchen and a pool down at the lobby. Matthew was in his glory.

We didn't do much, but play tourists. Springfield is a friendly if faded town with four nice, small museums, some shopping centers and it's the home of the Smith & Wesson shooting range. After a day at the museums -- where we saw some mangy stuffed animals and some sketches of Dr Seuss -- John, Ryan and I went to the S&W shooting range. There you can fire any weapon that the gun company manufactures. I was looking forward to shoting a 9mm, a .38 snub-nose hammerless pistol and a 1911 .45 remake. But it wasn't meant to be -- the range was hosting the final days of a shoot off and we couldn't shoot until 6PM that night.

But here is the best part: The shoot off was at the final moments so the target was pretty special. It was a piece of string suspended from the ceiling at about 20 yards. A piece of string.

Later, we went to the New England Air Museum. I was expecting a few old WWII planes and a jeep but we were surprised by a bevy of Vietnam era fighter jets, a WWII B-29 bomber, a retired F-14 Tomcat, a few huge helicopters and one old civilian airliner that looks like a Rolls Royce with wings. I was floored by the F-105 Thunderchief, which flew over the fields of Vietnam and I had always assumed that it was the size of, say, an F-16 Falcon or an F-4 Phantom. Nuh-uh. The Thunderchief is HUGE, about the size of a commuter jet that flies from New York to Boston. It was incredible to think that this was seen as a viable and nimble fighter-bomber. No wonder the Air Force couldn't wait to get rid of this pig. In the words of Tim -- oink oink.