Boarding Air Force One

When you visit the Reagan Presidential Library, the penultimate exhibit, something that dwarfs every other exhibit at every other presidential library I’ve seen thus far, is Air Force One, packed in next to Marine One in the Simi Valley, near the foot of the Santa Susana Mountain Range. It isn’t just that you can see the plane or the helicopter, but that you can board it and explore the inner spaces once reserved for those with top secret clearance. I can’t say that the picture below was one of my best, mostly because I had been flying and driving and walking for hours at the time it was taken, but at the very least, I needed evidence. One of my only conscionable questions to the gentleman on board was to ask about the size of Air Force One, compared to, say, the 747 jetliner I had just flown into LAX. He informed me that this was the same size as that, but that it was coded with a C, which indicated an extra six inches of height for walking. He also informed me that while this was the plane used to transport Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and briefly, George H. W. Bush, the one used after this one was two and a half times bigger.