Catchup blog post: Boeing Future of Flight

A preface.. a week or two ago, Boeing rolled out the first 787-8f. I wasn't a fan of the livery, and said so on twitter. The twitter rep for Boeing's Future of Flight noticed this, and invited me down to have a look at it in person, and take the tour of the factory, for free *Squee* :D

So we rented a car, and lizbyrd and her parents and I headed off down there.

Well, back up a second. I rented a Red, 3.5L V6 Dodge Charger. It was a freakin' awesome car, with only 2400kms on the clock (we did another 380kms). Shame it was raining most of the day. Second hand prices aren't too bad either. Hmm! :D

I went on the tour in 1999 with my mum, but I didn't have the plane-nerd background I do now, so I knew this was going to be different. Also, we almost got crashed into in a high speed car chase back in 1999, which fortunately didn't happen this time. The whole concept of being able to drive to another country for a day trip is cool. Back in 1999, they had a small shop in the middle of a parking lot. They now have a huge exhibition center + store. The exhibition center has all sorts of cool stuff to walk up to and touch and feel, such as a 747 tail, GE90 engine, a 787 carbon fibre re-enforced plastic section 41-43 or so and a 727 cockpit.

The tour starts in the 747 assembly hall, where they were making line number 2 - 6 of the 747-8f. I was reminded once again just how amazingly complex building a plane is. And that building is something else.. it's huge, and contains a mix of offices and assembly areas and cafeterias. I'd kind of like to work there, much in the same way that as a concept, working in an Apple store would be cool. You then hop back in the bus and go onto the 777/787 production area. Also interesting to see.

All up on the tour, I saw:

• N787EX - First 787 (as well as the next 12 or so in production)


• N7808A - First 747 Dreamlifter


• N747EX - First 747-8f (as well as the next 6 in various stages of production)


• A6-ECX - New 777-300 delivery flight for Emirates


• .. and some other stuff

So I've now seen the first 737, 747, 757 and 787. The first 727 is also at the Paine Field Airport, but I didn't see it. Eventually I'll see it and the first 707..

All up, good fun.

Sick..

Tuesday night last week, I started feeling really tired, the way you get when you're about to get sick. Driving back from the Boeing tour on wednesday, I started feeling very much under the weather, and worked from home on thursday. Come friday, when we were heading up to Whistler, I kept getting worse and worse..

So I basically spent the entire time in Whistler in our Hotel room with a low grade fever. Which was nice enough, but I'm sure I'm missing part of the experience. Anyway, last night and the night before I got very little sleep because of how much it hurt to swallow (we're talking 8 out of 10 type pain), so I actually went to the doctor in Whistler, and it turns out to be "strep throat", which seems to be the term instead of tonsillitis here. Yuck. Have some of Doctors Fleming and Florey's Magnificent Invention (aka penicillin), and it seems to be helping (and if it doesn't, I have some codeine too.. hah). But I can't go back to work until Wednesday. Doh.

Such is life.