Air Farce One

My son has taken to flying.

The big Christmas gift of the year was the Estes remote control Air Force One. It has a three-and-a-half foot wingspan and supposedly can fly over 1000 feet. I say "supposedly" because until this past weekend, we didn't realize the tremendous advantage that throwing the plane up would make.

(Yeah, I know ... it seems obvious in retrospect. But to be fair, the launch system involves an elastic cord and a spike that anchors into the ground. An upward throw didn't seem right at first.)

So this time out, we threw up. (As would anyone who was riding in that plane.)

The plane is made out of Styrofoam, so it is somewhat protected in the event of a crash. That is fortunate, because we crashed that plane over and over again. And it wasn't only cartwheel-type crashes in the grass, Alex managed to hit three different goal soccer goal posts, a chain link fence, and he almost had a perfect landing on the bleachers (save for the collision into the metal support that knocked off two engines and the tail).

Good flight, not-so-good landing

If these trial runs are any indication, my son will not be piloting the real Air Force One anytime soon. Landing after painful, high impact landing, he managed to knock off the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro Tempura, Secretary of State, and so on throughout the line of succession.

Were it not for the fact that the batteries finally ran out, we were one flight away from inaugurating Raul, the White House gardener, as the next ruler of the free world.

And wouldn't that have made that whole fence-across-America thing look ridiculous!