Birds, planes...mostly planes

Chicago's Air and Water Show. 3 days straight of thinking the city was under attack. When you hear a plane fly over your apt at low altitude, you think "well, crazy flight path, but the airport's not far away, so I understand." When you hear fighter jets passing overhead every 7-10 mins at 3000 ft, however, you begin to think that maybe Godzilla just crawled out of Lake Michigan and we're in a lot of trouble. Turns out, all the shenanigans are really just the Blue Angels doing laps over the city and dialing in their coordinates for the weekend's events.

Let me just reiterate... over the city.

So not only is Chicago's Air and Water Show the biggest, baddest, free-est air show in the country, but they like to fly their jets suuper low over the city. Kate and I were meeting up with one of Kate's new classmates who just happens to live in a really nice building right next to Navy Pier where all the festivities where happening, and as we got off the bus and started walking down the street, an F-14 did this earth shattering air-thrust maneuver down Michigan ave kind of like that one scene in the Transformers movie. The roar of the engines bouncing off the skyscrapers magnified the already awesome power of the jet. It was intense. One thing that has always been kind of lame about air shows in America is the fact that the planes are not allowed to fly towards the crowd. This isn't the case in Europe and I always thought they must get a much better show than we do. But then again, unlike in Europe, when a plane crashes here in America, nobody in the crowd gets hurt -trade off I guess. Well, all that seems to mean nothing in Chicago, because not only do the planes fly right towards the crowd, they fly really low, and really fast, and around buildings. It's insane.

So we were having a good time on the roofdeck of Kate's new classmate's flat, and she had some people over and there were a million other neighbors barbecuing and having a good time, and all and all, it was a good time had by all. Apparently we missed Bill Murray jumping out of an airplane with the Golden Knights, and I had already packed my camera up when the Blue Angels finally flew over head to close the show, but I was able to snap a few pics of the planes. Two planes were just amazing to watch: First the B2. You had to really pay attention to the sky to even know this one was flying because not only is this thing invisible to radar, but if radar had ears, it wouldn't be able to hear it either. I'm not kidding, I thought the plane was floating over head like a hot air balloon. I think it uses that silent propulsion drive from The Hunt for Red October. It's Area 51 technology for sure. Crazy. By contrast, however, the F-22 Raptor, another stealth plane, must be overcompensating for something, because that had to be the loudest plane ever made. If you've never seen one of these planes fly...oh my god. It can do anything. I'm pretty sure it even hovered at one point. Then, right before stalling or something, it shot straight up into the air and climbed about 4000 ft in about 2.5 secs. I think the pilot must have passed out from the G's because it hovered again, vertically. Just sort of sat there in the air. If I had seen one of these in person as a kid, I'm pretty sure I would've wanted to be a fighter pilot when I grew up. It's that kinda cool.

Anyway, show was fun, definately a different experience than the redneck fest these things usually are out west.