Saturday, November 5, 2022

One Of the Local Bartenders

While your blogmeister does not work at the Buffalo airport itself, his place of employment is quite literally *at* the airport, just the other side of the fence. Such proximity during the daily grind affords him many an opportunity to see, hear, feel, and sometimes even smell things with wings, often by simply looking out the door that's just a few feet from where he spends 8 to 10 hours each weekday.

The usual sights consist of rather mundane flying machines, made a bit less boring by the bright colors with which they're adorned, accented by the names 'Southwest', or 'American', etc. Every now and again, however, something a tad more interesting shows up at 'ole KBUF, including one that appeared many weeks back... a certain bird that your blogmeister identifies as a VC-25A, but which the masses know more colloquially as 'Air Force One'.

Anyhoo, the subject  of today's installment of BuffaloWingz ain't 'Air Force One' (look for that soonly-like, in a future installment), but could conceivably be referred to as such if the right circumstances were to come about at some point. (Doubtful, but hey, we can dream, can't we?) And in any case, while the photos below ain't the goodest your blogmeister has produced, they show a bird that he finds infinitely more interesting and freakin' groovy than the flying White House.

As he was leaving work the other day, your blogmeister was informed by Jim, the building custodian, that there was a 'tanker' just down the road, at the post office. Now, most folks would probably hear that and say to themselves, "Wut-da-hell's so exciting 'bout a gas truck and why's it at the post office?" But, being the nut for things with wings that he is, and knowing that said custodian was once in the USAF, your blogmeister also knows what the word 'tanker' means when passing between 'ole Jim's lips, and so decided to take a slight detour on his way home from work to take a looksee at the ramp down at the USPS Buffalo Air Mail Facility. The following photos resulted from said detour. Again, they ain't the most-bestest ever taken by yours truly, but... what the hey.

Oh, and at this point, I must point out that Jim was not only in the USAF, but he once served with the very outfit that operates the tanker in the photos... albeit back when said outfit was in the moving business, and not aerial bartending to gas-guzzling jets. (Don't tell Jim I told you that, though... he's a humble sort and doesn't like the publicity.)

What's that you ask? Oh, geez, how'da-hell could I almost forget? The 'tanker' is a KC-135R flown by the 328th Air Refueling Squadron of the 914th Air Refueling Wing, USAFRC, out of Niagara Falls ARS, NY.

Enjoy...


 
 
BuffaloWingz photos by S.Donacik


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