I Walked Out on Buzz Aldrin

Picture of the Day for 5/14/2011. I attended an Excellence in Aviation award banquet hosted by the Flight Test Historical Foundation. The event was held in Los Angeles and one of the presenters was Buzz Aldrin.

Quick tangent #1 - I found that the picture I have on my iPhone of me with Scrappy Johnson gave me a lot of "street cred" with the aviation buffs in attendance. Example - I asked one of the vendors who was selling prints of his aircraft artwork which was his favorite plane to draw. He indicated the F-104 Starfighter. I said, "Oh, I just had lunch the other day with the pilot who achieved an altitude record in 1958 in this plane." (Hey, you take your street cred where you can.)

But anyway, back to Buzz. I was on an extremely tight schedule. The award ceremony was supposed to end at 9:00 p.m. and then I was going to leave at 9:15 p.m. to catch my plane to Florida to see the space shuttle launch. Unfortunately, the program got off to a late start and by the time Buzz was asked to deliver a few closing remarks, it was nearly time for me to leave. As he continued to speak, it became painfully clear that I was going to have to walk out in the middle of his remarks and there was no way to sneak out gracefully due to the following reasons:

-The attentive crowd was a little star-struck by Buzz so there was a hush over the assembly.

-My table was in the middle of the banquet hall. No sneaking out on the periphery.

-I had to traverse a wooden dance floor in my high heels. I dare you to try walking across a wooden dance floor in high heels with nary a clacking sound.

It was rather mortifying, but after I had made a break for it, I had to be amused that I walked out on Buzz Aldrin.

Quick tangent #2 - I've been at a few events where Buzz and his wife Lois have been in attendance. I'm always fascinated to see what she's going to wear.