SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A voter's question about meeting foreign leaders in a fancy plane inspired a little riff from Sen. Barack Obama about the presidential airplane.

Obama said he has been on Air Force One once — after speaking at the dedication of the Abraham Lincoln presidential library in Illinois. "George Bush offered us a ride back," he said.

The plane was "big, spiffy, [and had] all kinds of people in there doing all sorts of stuff," Obama said, laughing at his own joke.

But the best thing, he said, is that the plane passed through a thunderstorm on the way back to Washington.

"We were bumping and shaking and knocking all around and I knew we weren't going down," he said, to laughs from his 100-person audience at a town hall forum. "You feel very confident in there. Turbulence doesn't bother you at all. ... It's got like 8 engines."

— Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter, The Washington Times