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"You must understand," said Lora, "that in the modern world the demands for tuition have become inversely proportional to the value received. That's why our tuition is free at Wreck Beach University." She began to laugh.
We kept this kind of conversation up until two o'clock in the morning, interspersed with a lot of humor. Lora looked dead tired by then, and probably was so. We certainly were. Except we didn't have the luxury to go to sleep. We had to get back to the hotel, check out, drive to the airport to get onto the first plane to Seattle and be there by eight in the morning, at the latest, to catch the air show transport back home. The whole affair became quite a mad rush, all the way.
When we got to Seattle, we arrived not a minute too soon. We were just in time to see the rear cargo hatch of the C-5 being closed and secured. They had moved the flight schedule forward by thirty minutes. Luckily the front hatch was still down. We practically ran on board while the front ramp was already lifting off the ground and the first engine was being started.
"Turn Number One," as I remembered, the captain would have called.
"Number One at sixteen percent," the engineer would have replied.
As it turned out, there was no room for us on the upper deck. Every seat was taken. But who needed a seat? Not us! We found ourselves a soft spot in the cargo bay, in the back of the truck that carried the display center tent. The tent was folded into large flat bundles that resembled a giant mattress. But only God knew why they were taking the whole truck along onto the airplane. It made no sense to fly a heavy old truck around. Surely they must have trucks in Milwaukee, I thought, where we were going next. The thing puzzled me.
And another thing puzzled me too. How could it be that we got to Milwaukee so fast? I heard the wheels touch down and someone calling to us to get ready to unload.
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