The first event of note for me during the week of October 20 was my Thursday lunch meeting with Irene Veca, Niki Krutop, Doug Obenshain, and Robert Craig at Azul. Irene, Niki, and Doug are all employees of Ernst & Young in San Diego and are the folks that take care of the annual Entrepreneur of the Year San Diego awards that will next occur in June 2009.

The reason we met was because Robert, his wife, Betty, and I are all planning to go to the national awards event in Palm Desert next month, and the Ernst & Young folks wanted to be sure we were up to speed on the arrangements. We also discussed next year’s program in San Diego and how the FED could best support it.

Friday was the usual boat trip on Solutions to Oceanside. Mark Waldschmidt, an early SAIC employee and good friend, joined us.

Saturday night was the big event of the week when I was inducted into the San Diego Air and Space Museum‘s International Aerospace Hall of Fame. There were about 400 attendees, many of them active or retired military. The admiral who runs all flight services at North Island was at our table. Inductees included Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, Tuskegee Airmen Roscoe Brown and Lee Archer, John & Martha King of King Schools, Steve Pisanos of the original Eagle Squadrons, General Bob Cardenas, who was a USAF Flying Wing Test Pilot, and me.

Since most of the inductees had some connection to the aerospace industry or had flown for the armed services and described shooting down the enemy, I felt slightly out of place as the honorees. I was somewhat at a loss as to what to say when it came my turn at the podium. I said, “You know, I haven’t flown any airplanes, or shot any airplanes down, or strafed any enemy troops from an airplane. The reason I might be qualified for this award is that I’ve shot down a lot of bad ideas in my time.”

The San Diego Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park is a truly wonderful place. It contains a number of full-scale airplanes, simulators, and memorabilia — including a copy of Lindbergh’s airplane Spirit of St. Louis, which was built in San Diego at Ryan Airlines.

– Bob