The Potomac River Affair
or
The Day I Met Benazir Bhutto
One beautiful Spring day in 1987, I was standing on the North bank of the Potomac River, a few miles downstream from downtown D.C. in Fort Washington Park, located at a strategic bend in the river, built during the days when the British had the nasty habit of burning the town to the ground. I was standing on a rock which was the furthest promontory of land, just big enough for my feet. The river is at least half a mile wide at that point, and widens considerably just downstream. I stood gazing over a vast expanse of water, and noticed a motorboat tooling downstream past me, about 100 or 150 yards away. In the back of the boat were some men in suits and a woman in a colorful sari. I didn't know who she was at the time, but I realized later she must have been then Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was in town to tell the elder President Bush "No, I don't want to give up the Bomb just now, thank you very much." I waved to her, and everyone on the boat looked at me. I waved again, and she waved back. Then I turned to my left and noticed an Apache Helicopter about 20 feet off the water, using me as a benchmark. I was struck by how quiet it was, and how skinny it looked viewed head on. But its most impressive feature at the time was the machine gun cannon hanging off the bottom of the fuselage. I knew from watching the Discovery Channel that it used a laser guidance system which tracked the gunner's eyeballs, so wherever the gunner was looking, the gun was pointing. I could tell, the gunner was looking at me. In retrospect, I suppose if I had done something incredibly stupid, like pretend I had a weapon, I might have been chopped in half. Fortunately no such suicidal thought crossed my mind. I just stood there with a big shiteating grin on my face, and the chopper flew right over me, like it was on rails, about 15 feet over my head.
Now. Do you believe that?
or
The Day I Met Benazir Bhutto
One beautiful Spring day in 1987, I was standing on the North bank of the Potomac River, a few miles downstream from downtown D.C. in Fort Washington Park, located at a strategic bend in the river, built during the days when the British had the nasty habit of burning the town to the ground. I was standing on a rock which was the furthest promontory of land, just big enough for my feet. The river is at least half a mile wide at that point, and widens considerably just downstream. I stood gazing over a vast expanse of water, and noticed a motorboat tooling downstream past me, about 100 or 150 yards away. In the back of the boat were some men in suits and a woman in a colorful sari. I didn't know who she was at the time, but I realized later she must have been then Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was in town to tell the elder President Bush "No, I don't want to give up the Bomb just now, thank you very much." I waved to her, and everyone on the boat looked at me. I waved again, and she waved back. Then I turned to my left and noticed an Apache Helicopter about 20 feet off the water, using me as a benchmark. I was struck by how quiet it was, and how skinny it looked viewed head on. But its most impressive feature at the time was the machine gun cannon hanging off the bottom of the fuselage. I knew from watching the Discovery Channel that it used a laser guidance system which tracked the gunner's eyeballs, so wherever the gunner was looking, the gun was pointing. I could tell, the gunner was looking at me. In retrospect, I suppose if I had done something incredibly stupid, like pretend I had a weapon, I might have been chopped in half. Fortunately no such suicidal thought crossed my mind. I just stood there with a big shiteating grin on my face, and the chopper flew right over me, like it was on rails, about 15 feet over my head.
Now. Do you believe that?