Wednesday, November 01, 2006

I went to an airshow! Thunderbirds are Go!

Last Sunday, Stink Pants and I went to an airshow with his friend JRRay and JRRay's friends. I've never been to an airshow before. Yes, I've seen airplanes do tricks and acrobatics on TV, and I was at the cherry festival when the Blue Angels were there, but I don't think that counts as an actual airshow, because I only saw what I could from Bubbles Momma's back yard.

We woke up at 8:00 am to go to this airshow, because it takes two hours to drive to Edwards Air Force Base. I slept on the way there, because as most of you know I don't really shine in the morning... I sleep.

Before I go any further, I must mention that one of JRRay's friends has a six-year-old son that went with us. He was a little darling :) And! He didn't mind that I kept getting his name wrong. It wasn't even a hard name! For some reason, I heard one thing and said another. Meh, I stink. Anyway, He was full of energy, and weird conversation topics. Did you know if you put a hole in a raisin, and put it in a glass of Coke, the raisin will rise and fall within the Coke? Yeah, I didn't know that either. I haven't tried it, but the young man assured me it works.

Airshows are neat. I didn't think it would be, because I'm not really that into airplanes. However, when you put a bunch of airplanes on display and have them doing all sorts of tricks above you, and you have a bunch of carnival food stands up so you can eat while you're watching the tricks, they're actually entertaining!

We got to walk inside all sorts of different planes, like this one big NASA plane, and this other big... uh... grey plane, and a neato looking helicopter with a tilty tail! Okay, so I didn't learn the names of any of those planes, but it was still really neat. I did learn the tail of the helicopter was tilted for 5% more lift :).

Oh, another thing that happened. Stink Pants was wearing a t-shirt sporting the logo of our alma mater, and one of the air force guys went to school there! Graduated 1996! Small world, huh?

The day ended with us waiting forty-five minutes for the Thunderbirds to perform. The forty-five minutes would've seemed a lot shorter if the air base people hadn't started announcing, playing music and making it seem like they were going to perform in five minutes when they actually meant forty-five. To pass the time, I pulled out my trusty yo-yo and entertained the young man with my fancy (not really) yo-yo skills.

Aerial maneuvers are cool. The jets fly at each other like they're going to hit each other, and they don't! Precision flying is so exciting! They also had some 80's hard rock streaming through the speakers which made me feel like I was in the middle of some sort of Top Gun movie montage.

The day ended with a two hour drive back home. I sat in the back with the young man, and we practiced origami with the program from the airshow. I made my usual cranes, and he made paper rocks! Ahhh, children are so cute.

4 comments:

Claytonian said...

I remember being tortured as a child, er, forced to go to those things. Not my bag. :(

Amanda said...

Never been to an air show, but Fluffy and I went to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force on Saturday near Dayton, OH. It's huge. We only had a few hours, but it really takes 3 days to see it all. And I didn't learn the names of the planes either, but it was still really neat too.

You should learn how to make paper airplanes! I'll bet there are helicopters too.

Amanda said...

Dave gave me a hard time for not mentioning that the museum's on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I'm still not exactly sure why he thought it was so bizarre to not include it, but now I have. So there. **raspberry**

Princess Blogonoke said...

hahahah!