I had an antipathy to Ross Perot, the independent presidential candidate, from the moment that I heard him speak on television. He was talking about education. Any time that you hear a federal candidate talk about education you know that he is trying to snow the voters. The Federal Government has almost nothing to do with funding or delivering education in this country; it is overwhelmingly a local and state government show.
But it turns out that H. Ross Perot, Jr.is my new hero. I was down on the Washington Mall on Sunday afternoon. The Smithsonian was running a folk festival. Instead of scheduling it from 5-10 pm, Mexican- or Italian-style, they’d scheduled it during the peak heat of the afternoon. After one hour it became intolerable and I ducked into the Air and Space Museum to soak up the air conditioning. Up on the second floor, they have a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. H. Ross Perot, Jr., a young punk with 500 hours, and J. Coburn, a 3500-hour Vietnam vet were the first people to fly a helicopter all the way around the world.
Two guys. Big extra fuel tank in the back seats. One (very reliable turbine) engine. Refueling stop on a container ship.
(I’ve not kept up with the achievements of the children of our current President; perhaps the comment section will fill up with reports of their heroic deeds.)
The second round-the-world helicopter flight was the following year, and it was solo! Dick Smith, an Aussie icon, did it:
http://www.rotorhub.com/resource/operatns/record.htm
Dick Smith has done a lot of other cool stuff, too, such as circumnavigating the world via the poles (rather than around the middle):
http://www.scouts.com.au/main.html?page=/discover/famous/smith.html
Heroic deeds of the Bush Twins? Avoiding being featured on “Girls Gone Wild.” 🙂
I don’t see anything wrong with your choice. Comparing to previous presidents this guy should not be worse than any of them. And he can fly a chopper when no one else can fly. I wonder if you voted for Clinton and if so, was it because he could play a saxophone?