Air Show

Hey everybody!

It's Noelle, your favourite randomness expert.  Today’s random topic is:  you know how when you get off school in the spring and say, “Oh good, I’m going to have so much time to relax this summer!”  And then... stuff just... pops up out of nowhere, like schedule dwarves or something.

Yeah that’s my summer so far.

Still enjoying it though!

If you remember my summer goals post you’ll remember that I decided to exersize more and play more golf, and I suceeded.  Beyond my regular Monday classes, I’ve also been doing a Tuesday-Thursday class, meaning I’m playing three days a week.  A bit exhausting but worth it in the end.  I’d say I’m doing well with my goal of getting out and about more, because I’ve been taking walks with my dog and doing golf drills pretty regularly.

Another one of my goals was to start “arting professionally” as I so eloquently put it, and that’s going well too.  If you didn’t know, I started making and selling these bookmarks:

And I’m working on a second batch already!  This gen. two will have some cute baby dragons and a fandom related one. They’re two dollars apiece plus shipping, if you’re interested :P

Shameless advertising aside, I also took an art intensive, where I drew/painted for three hours a day, four days in a row.  Beyond being a grueling energy-suck, it was a quite enjoyable art class!  I didn’t really learn anything new, but having the extra time made me really work at the drawings I did.  Here are two examples of the art that we drew:

(fabric study.  I like drawing them but never know what to do with the end result.  I can’t hang it up and be like “look at this beautifully shaded blob I drew, it took me three hours!”)

(I’m very proud of this still life, it’s definitely my best ever)

But enough of goals updates:  the real reason you clicked on this post was to hear about this alleged ‘air show’, and I shall not disappoint!  If you don’t know what an airshow is, it’s when a bunch of planes fly around.  ...saying it that way makes it sound really boring.

But it’s not!  Our base recently hosted a three day air show, and while I honestly couldn’t care less about airplanes (winglets?  engine?  werds??) I had a really great time.

Our plan for this airshow was like this:

Friday:  walk to Dad’s office and then to the park, look at all the cool planes and watch them fly around.  Today was the civilian-free day, so there was a lot less people, and hopefully it would all work out properly

Saturday:  don’t leave the base, there will be too many dang people

Sunday:  don’t leave the base, but walk to go see Tora, Tora, Tora (a really cool Pearl Harbor re-enactment)

Things did not go to plan, exactly

As we walked to the air show on Friday, we quickly discovered an influx of people who had not read the list of ‘stuff you may not bring to the airshow’.  Weirdly enough, you were allowed to bring chairs, purses, things with bags that you could easily hide stuff in (...not that you’re...supposed to...um) ...BUT NOT BACKPACKS

Honestly I think the security guards just gave up because as the day went on I saw more and more backpacks.  It seemed like such a weird rule, though!

Friday was the ‘test’ day - which had some unfortunate side effects.  The most obvious one was they didn’t think to get out the trash bins until about an hour after we arrived!  So your choices were to litter (which many people did.  C’mon, y’all are military folk, you don’t know the importance of keeping the flight line clean?) or to carry around your trash awkwardly until you found the group of airmen frantically trying to assemble the trash can wheels.

Still, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had.  The last air show I could have gone to was in New Jersey and for some reason I was like “nahhhhh rather not” (it was raining and cold at the time; I think that had something to do with it).

I took an unfortunate amount of selfies

When we got past the horde of people trying to ‘but it’s not a backpack it’s a man-purse!’ their way through security, we immediately ducked into the hangar for some shade.  Now, at an airshow, there are two kinds of displays:  static displays and then the ones where they actually do awesome stuff.  The hangar had a lot of smaller static displays, along with clubs who were trying to freebie-give you into joining.  There was a robotics club guy who managed to give me a business card, two bracelets, and was trying to talk me into trying out their robot before Dad saved me.  We avoided the club booths after that.

One of the static displays, along with the legion of children who wanted to climb in it and press all the buttons (and no, I did not pet the puppers, it was a service dog)

Dad told me this thing folds up like a musical instrument and squishes into a much smaller case.  I call witchcraft

Right after we walked out of the hangar we discovered they were doing some kind of parachuting display outside, which turned out to be really cool (and kinda really dangerous looking)

The plane was going in spirals and dropping parachuters as it went.  The ones you can just barely see in this picture were carrying an American flag between them

A really crappy picture of the flag-carriers

There was also this performance by a yellow stunt plane, who I did not get any photos of unfortunately.  This guy (or girl) was amazing.  Stalling in mid-air, falling from hundreds of feet up, catching themselves at the last minute, all of it.  My dad kept looking at the sky and muttering, “How are they doing that?!” because this pilot was breaking the laws of physics.  I wish I had gotten pictures but I was so busy just staring at the plane in awe.

After that we wandered around for a bit, looking at the outdoor static displays and people-watching.  We even got to go on one of the private planes that admirals fly around in (it’s really nice guys.  Like really nice.  Think leather seats and mahogany trim nice)  Dad managed to make friends with every person we met and eventually we headed to the food tents to get lunch.

Now, like I said, there are good parts and bad parts to being the first comers to an air show:  good parts - there was plenty of food.  Bad:  they ran out later.  Good:  they sold us some cold water bottles.  Bad:  they sold us some cold water bottles for FOUR AND A HALF dollars!  And you weren’t allowed to bring any water bottles of your own!  Along with those backpacks!

Anyway, it was getting kinda hot and people were taking shelter the only places they could - under the wings of airplanes.  There’s something about... seeing warbirds... the scourge of the sky... become a home for grandparents who are sick and tired of walking around this air show thing honey.  I don’t know, it’s just weird and oddly hilarious to me.  At any rate, we found an abandoned patch of concrete and settled down with our food.

I shouldn’t be allowed to have a camera

And then...MORE STATIC DISPLAYS.  There were a ton of different air planes and to be honest I don’t remember the names of any of them.  The only one that I even barely remember was the F-15/16?  It went flying -or rather, roaring- over our heads while we ate, quite literally shaking the ground and pretty much killing whatever hearing survived my music tastes.

It’s a plane dragon!

Noelle’s Air Show Tips:  have hearing protection on hand!  If you don’t, well... you will be deaf by age thirty.  This is totally concrete science with much basis

Mom was happy to hand over her phone to take pictures, as she never gets pictures of herself in family trips unless she takes selfies

Me on the other hand, I like taking selfies, so I did.  I mean, look at those sunglasses and tell me it wasn’t worth it

I was getting pretty tired at this point so most of my pictures turned into “I’m bored let’s be artistic” and  “can I go home now” stuff.  I actually did head home, though I stopped at the shoppette.  I found that all the slushies were empty (and remained so for almost a week!!)  and had to go home empty handed, to sort through all of these pictures.

All in all, it was a good day.  A hot, tiring day, but a good one all the same.  The air show, though not quite as prepared for people as they could have been, was fun and I enjoyed the many displays they had set up.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you did, let me know in the comments!  Have you ever been to an air show?  Did you like it?  Tell me all about it and cya next week!!