Oops

During our lunch break today I am pumping some $4.19/gallon gas into our car at the Mobil station which sits at the edge of the Won Pat International Airport. The approaching planes often fly right over the station and so it isn't unusual when one starts down overhead. But this one is different -- thunderous whine.

I look up and there is a massive lumbering B-1 bomber a few hundred feet from touch down.

"Hmm," I'm thinking, "I wonder if they've had a problem up at Andersen Air Force Base so they're diverting military planes to the civilian airport?"

But then suddenly the plane pulls up with full engines -- streams over the runway with pedal obviously on the metal -- and back into the sky. The plane then loops around back out over the Philippine Sea and realigns itself to land on what was certainly the intended runway -- at Andersen Air Force Base.

It's this kind of stuff that makes Guamanians, who are actually extremely patriotic and pro-military, nervous about sharing the island with the armed forces.