This weekend will probably live on for quite a while as one of the best weekends ever. For once, instead of a solid dockett of work and responsibilities I had almost entirely fun activities planned for the weekend. The best part of which was the Joint Services Airshow at Andrews Air Force Base on Saturday.
To say that I was excited to go see this was an understatement. I went with my friend and her two sons aged 3 & 5. They are my for all intents and purposes my "nephews" and are at amazing ages that make it so fun to do stuff like this with them. Truth be told though, I was probably way more excited than even the two of them combined. If you've ever seen the Disney vacations commerical where the family is going to sleep the night before their big vacation I'm the little boy who says "I'm too excited to sleeeep."
The weather on Saturday was absolutely perfect. Very few clouds, nice breezes, and temps in the low 70s. You park at Fedex field and go through a pretty intense security checkpoint before getting onto busses that take everyone over to the base. The boys were very excited about the buses, perhaps moreso than for the planes. The security lines were a bit long but the rest of the day proved to be worth the wait. We played the game "If you sit down the line will move faster", which totally worked. Every time the guys sat down it seemed like 30 seconds later we'd move forward. We also played "What do the wheels on the bus do?" Duh - They go round and round. David was particularly excited by both the wheels on the bus song and in getting to the ride the bus who's wheels were going round and round.
Once at the airfield we were all blown away at how many aircraft were on display and how huge the event was. The airfield is probably close to a mile long and was just covered with every conceivable plane from huge C-5 transport planes to the B2 Bomber to the Stunt Bi-planes to the Blue Angels, to the Amazing F-22 Raptor. Not to mention there were in excess of 100,000 bazillion people there too. They had a bunch of the larger aircraft opened up to walk through and they had others where you could sit in the cockpit with a pilot and get your picture or ask questions.
The Navy had a dive tank with a Navy Seal diver playing tick-tack-toe with a dry-erase marker. I am proud to report that Jeffrey beat the diver despite his occasional confusion at whether he was playing as x's or o's.
I knew this was going to be a great photo opportunity so I rented a special super zoom lens so that I could get some close up shots on the planes and paratroopers. You can check out the pics here.
The kids had a total blast. I had a blast seeing everything and got a kick out of seeing things through their eyes too. There was a great atmosphere of American pride surrouding the whole event. Whatever your position or views on war or the military this show was a great reminder of the value, and the cost, of some of the freedoms we often take for granted. How many other places in the world allow the general public to come trooping onto a military base to see all of the cool military hardware and to speak to the pilots and troops and see this amazing stuff up close.