There I was, laying in bed this morning, trying to ignore the Bad Dogs (who wanted OUT!). I was forced out of half-sleep by ungodly jet noise from the Air Base.
Whuh? I was groggy, yes, but this was loud. Very loud. There's an airshow at the base this weekend, so I just decided it was some aircraft I wasn't used to hearing and went back to sleep.
Later, I cruised to Publix. I've still got the top down, and thus could clearly hear the sound coming again. Looked up (so was everyone else on the road - it was a dangerous ten seconds or so).
Ahhhh....that explained it. Unless the Thunderbirds have changed their colors, we have the Blue Angels in town.
I'd talk more about this, but Bill Whittle already did it, and he puts this better than anyone I've ever read on the subject. If you've got a few spare days, you really ought to wander over to his place and read the essays.
They taxied to the end of the runway, took off in a roar, and disappeared out over the turquoise and green reefs. Spectacular! Great show! Not sure it was worth two hours, and that one guy down there won’t stop talking…
"Launched on May 25th, 1953…powerful symbol of the American Indian…never missed a show due to maintenance problems, blah blah blah..."
Hey, thought the five-year-old, the jets are gone, show’s over, let’s get out of the heat...
But behind my back were six of America’s most powerful fighter aircraft and the best pilots on the planet, not a hundred feet above the water and racing toward the rear of our bleachers at nearly seven hundred miles an hour – just under the speed of sound. And I mean just under.
So when I looked down at this man in the blue jumpsuit, I couldn’t hear them coming, because they were only a few feet behind their own roar. And when he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the United States Air Force---“ something caught my eye at what seemed like a few feet above my head. I saw a blur of silver and red, white and blue, and that’s about all I had time for, because the man shouted into his microphone the word “---THUNDERBIRDS!" and that’s when the sound hit.
And that was about all she wrote for little Billy. I was pretty much done after that.
Anyway, that's the sound I've gotten all day, and will get throughtout the weekend. Which is cool. I can see it a thousand times, and fighters just always make me grin.
In related news, Sparky disapproves of loud jets and has decided he'll bark at them. That is getting annoying.
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