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For those unfamiliar with Tailhook, it's an annual convention of Naval Aviation, and it attracts everyone from students in the training squadrons to guys who retired from the Navy 3o years ago. The keynote speaker this year was the last man to walk on the moon, and Nick was very excited to shake his hand. So yes, it's a glorified excuse to party like we're 20 again, but they actually have official lectures and meetings that happen too (it's just that I have never been to any of that boring stuff).
Friday night is the big party night, and various squadrons or communities have party rooms (aka "admins") on the convention floor. It's fun to wander among the rooms, sampling the various signature drinks and finding people that we haven't seen or heard from in years. Perhaps I'm making it sounds more genteel than it really is - it's basically a huge blow-out Animal House-style party that lasts all night and (if you're lucky) leaves you with just a little hangover the next morning. If you're Nick, you end up wondering if that In-N-Out burger will stay down the next day ... if you're Erin, you end up apologizing to your friends for the extreme lack of tact or internal censor that earned you the new call sign of Triple T (as in the Terrible Tailhook Tirades). You can take a visual journey through the night by clicking on the picture below:
We met up with our friends Daryn, Whitney, and Kim on Friday just in time for the hearty partying. Here's Whitney and Daryn meeting up with us during dinner.
Still mostly sober, Kim, Daryn, Whitney, and I share some love (or is that just clinging to another Estrogen source in the sea of oogling testosterone?)
And just to prove that the world of Naval Aviation is very small, here are two fellow Illini NROTC alumni who managed to find Nick in the middle of the melee.
There was also decent representation by our old squadron, VS-33 ... in addition to Nick, BGE, Chubs, and PeeWee all came out for the fun. It was kind of a special year for all of the S-3 alumni as well. As the last East Coast Viking squadrons get ready to shut their doors forever, the very last Viking admin was held this year. From now on, we'll just have to be content with partying with the E-2 and F/A-18 jokers. sigh.
As Kim, Whit, and I were not flying out until late Sunday, we decided to head out to my favorite little town ever, Truckee. It sounds like hickville, I know, but it's an absolutely adorable little town about 30 minutes West of Reno (in CA). At one time it was a hub for the gold rush, but the Main Street area is really well preserved and the town has made a serious effort to keep its architectural history intact. Now it's full of cute restaurants, galleries, and upscale shops. One of my new favorite places to visit in Truckee is the Carmel Gallery.
During the Brace family vacation at Lake Tahoe last December, we spent a day in Truckee and happened upon the gallery on its opening day. Elizabeth Carmel is an amazing photographer who takes incredible landscapes and makes you look at nature in a new way. She has a commanding use of of the photomerge features in Creative Suite 3 from Adobe ... it allows her to merge different exposures of the same photograph so that you see the highlights and shadows with amazing clarity and it creates a surreal vision of the world. If you have time, definitely check out her website: http://www.elizabethcarmel.com/Welcome.html Click on the "Online Portfolios" link to see a very large collection of her works. She captures the Sierras and the California Coast like no one I've ever seen.
So ... just 51 weeks left until the next Tailhook!
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