Let the Games Begin! The masses have arrived and the greatest airshow on earth has begun. I was brought out of my trailer this morning by the sounds of an F-15 making repeated low passes over the runway and cranking overhead, the sound so loud you can feel it vibrating in your chest. What a way to start your day! We sunscreened up and hit the fly market, the aircraft displays, and finally the Warbird section. Throughout the day, we'd be walking around and stop to watch the Ford TriMotor going by giving rides to those who want to pay, or we'd watch the F-4 as it took its turn. The skies are just alive with helicopters giving tours, and layer upon layer of aircraft coming in, going out, practicing, or showing off. As I started typing this, a plane went up very high and skywrote the letters "EAA", which stood out beautifully in the blue sky. Underneath him, the airshow began with 12 planes in formation, smoke on, flying over center field; meanwhile another group of aircraft came from show left at an altitude below the first. Just layers of massive quantities of aircraft. The Yaks came in from the right, just over the runway, and did a break-away. The military jets are always a welcome addition to the show.
After a day of walking, we came back to the campsite for a little while, and then around 5 pm we headed back to the flight line to attend a Beach Boys concert. They fired off the concert with the Aeroshell T-6 team doing a low pass overhead, and there was a crowd there of at least 12,000 people. Last year we didn't go because it rained, so this year we wanted to say we actually did something. It's an experience being in a sea of that many people. If I were indoors I'd have had a panic attack, but luckily outdoors the space open above my head makes about anything next to me more tolerable. I held my camera up over my head and snapped some shots, so we'll see what I ended up with when I get back home. We enjoyed the concert for awhile, and then Kaylee (who is just exhausted) pooped out on us and laid down on the concrete using my camera bag as a pillow, so we walked back to our trailer, listening to the Beach Boys most of the way home.
We've run into several people who knew us or knew of us out on the flightline. Mostly because Steve and Chuck were wearing Glenndale t-shirts. It's always odd being in a sea of folks in a however many square mile area and running into people you know.
As the first day's airshow closed, we headed out to the store to pick up some more lunch supplies, and as the sun is setting, the Goodyear Blimp is making repeated circuits over the camp grounds with its sign flashing the message of the day. The 30 or so folks from Kokomo are around the campfire, and I'm sitting under a WiFi pole whereby I can access the internet at full strength. Unfortunately as the masses moved in, the WiFi went downhill, and I can't usually get any kind of decent signal from our campsite now. So I take a golf cart once a day and I motor on down to the pole where the WiFi box is posted, and I sit under it and write about my day as the traffic goes by on bike, motorcycle, scooter, foot, car, truck and golfcart. Several times people have pointed at me and laughed, but I'm okay with that, they're probably just sorry they didn't think of it first. ;)
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