Friday, May 8th was Jane Wayne Day at Quantico. This is an opportunity for the Marine wives to come to the base and basically pretend to be a Marine for a day. Why do they call it Jane Wayne Day? Beats me. Apparently this is name used at Marine bases across the country for the day that the "spouses" get to come up and participate. Was John Wayne married? Was he even a Marine? I am pretty confused about this. The flier advertising the day's activities was emblazoned with a woman in chaps, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, a pink bandana around her neck and holding two pistols. For me, this implies something with more of a "Dude Ranch" feel, but I knew better. I still wanted to go. Go figure.
The activity schedule for the day went something like this:
8:00am - gather in the "Ready room"
9:00am - watch a K9 demonstration
10-12pm - shoot guns!!
12-1pm - eat an MRE for lunch
1-2pm - fly in the simulators
2-3pm - self-defense class
3-4 - tour of the Marine One helicopter
Do you see all the opportunities here to embarrass our husbands? Most of the wives think this kind of stuff is cheesy, and generally I do to, but I thought it sounded cool so I suckered Gina Trent into going with me. She is a former Marine herself, so I knew I would at least get my entertainment from watching her try to outdo the other wives! She didn't disappoint :) Once I got there and met some of the other ladies, I realized that there while there were many at home who found this kind of thing cheesy, there were still others who found it VERY exciting and who showed up ready to kick some butt and take some names. Some were decked out in camouflage outfits with cute matching shirts and hats with sequins, others were taking a more casual approach with very little clothing so that all their tattoos could be prominently seen and therefore taken more seriously. Gina and I took the middle of the road approach and went with jeans and sneakers.
All in all, the day was a blast. I really enjoyed shooting all the guns at the range. They let us shoot all kinds, (pistols, rifles and shotguns) until they ran out of ammo. We got some great pictures of us trying to look tough while shooting. Stay tuned for those. The flight simulator was VERY impressive. Inside a dark room, they have what looks to be a shell of the front of a helicopter with all the instruments and buttons. The room walls are video screens from floor to ceiling. They can put any number of programs on the screens to mimic some of the common flight scenarios that the pilots practice on regularly. For us, they put on a program where Marine One lands on the South Lawn of the White House. Luckily, Coach was there to show us how everything worked and basically do all the flying for us, while we pretended to. Thanks Coach!
Kevin spent the morning turning in all of his equipment and badges and we were able to bid farewell to DC and get on the road to NY around 4:00pm. We made pretty good progress until we got to Baltimore and hit the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic. Kevin would also like to add that Delaware sucks. All in all, our first leg of the actual road trip was pretty uneventful and we arrived at Kevin's parents house in Peekskill, NY around 10:30 pm.
MRE eaten: Chili Mac
Miles traveled: 279
Pit stops: 1
Strangest sight: A man in a Mazda Miata convertible watching TV on his laptop - while driving!
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