Wichita Falls

We spent the weekend in Wichita Falls, Texas, with our good friends Tom and Linda Ventriglia. Tom is a squadron commander at Sheppard AFB. We go way back--to our tour at Hill AFB in the mid-90s where David and Tom worked together in the 649th Munitions Squadron. Tom and Linda have two boys, Alex (5) and Nicky (3). All five kids had a great time in the monster wading pool in their back yard. We adults enjoyed eating, drinking, reminiscing and making inappropriate jokes together. Good times!

Here are a couple photos from our tour of Tom's facility this morning. His squadron does all the entry level munitions training for the Air Force. This includes building bombs, as well as loading them on pallets and aircraft, so they have mock-ups or real aircraft of all types for practice. Above, you can see Bridget sitting in the cockpit of a real (although not operational) F-16. We also got to climb up in the cockpit of the B1 mockup.

Below you can see Tom with our kids (only Douglas's fingers are visible,) in front of Tom's B-52. You can see his name on it. Some people are buff, but very few have their own BUFF. How cool is that?


After the tour we loaded up Fezzik and headed for Amarillo, Texas. It is flat and hot and windy, but if you ever have to come here, the KOA is very nice.

Link to more pics at the Kodak Gallery: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=3x70wrv.53ahp8s7&Uy=-18vp3v&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=735817793809_386892660503