There's a fairly large delegation from the United States Senate at the show. Led by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, the crew seems to be having a pretty good time. Kansas City, or the "Paris of the Plains" as it is being called here, has set up a booth featuring a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Here you can see Colorado Senator Wayne Allard enjoying the photo-op.

After the opening ceremony, the senators moved on to the the Honeywell exhibition space to check out that company's 3-D Flight Deck. Here we see Senators Mikulski, Allard, and Stevens (from right to left) wearing their 3-D glasses in what has to be one of the funniest images of the day.

Finally, my personal favorite from this morning. I have no idea what these girls are promoting--if you can't make out the writing on the lycra, here's the link--but whatever it is, I'm sure we need three of them.

The flying demonstrations have been underway for about an hour now, and your correspondent is stuck in the press "chalet"--so that's all for now. But I was able to sit down with Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe for about a half hour this morning and will have more to report on that conversation in a little while.