US Navy Blue Angels

On Sunday we went down to the marina district here in San Francisco to catch the airshow for Fleetweek 2011.

They always show you aircraft that are not the US Navy Blue Angels first, for like two hours, and then they wrap it up by showing you the Blue Angels, who kind of blow everything else away.

That’s not to say the acts that come on first aren’t good.. they’re fantastic.

It’s just that if they were a tasty spread you’d put on your English muffin instead of airplanes, then all the preliminary acts would be margarine (starting with Blue Bonnet and working their way up) and The Blue Angels would be butter. Pure, golden butter from happy cows in California, not those freezing cows standing in a blizzard in Wisconsin.

We went last year and really liked it. So we took a bus to the same spot and arrived right when the Canadian Snowbirds were doing aerial loops and stuff.

The Transamerica Pyramid

These were followed by a solo US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet that showed us all how badass it is by going about 700 mph at fifty feet above San Francisco Bay, turning on a dime, climbing straight-up for about 3000 feet and and then launching a rocket barrage at the Transamerica Pyramid and leveling it to the ground in seconds. Color me impressed!

Then a United Airlines 747 flew really low right in front of us, which resulted in a massive tidal-wave of yawns. It turned around and did it again while the announcer extolled the virtues of flying United but he didn’t say anything about Virgin Air, which can probably fly low too, and show better movies while doing it. They also have the best fare from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate bridge that you’re going to find anywhere, especially if you fly round-trip first class.

Coit Tower

Next was a US Airforce F-15 Eagle, which did basically the same kind of things the Navy Super Hornet had done except for leveling the Transamerica Pyramid because there was only one of those, so Coit Tower got blown to smithereens. I actually found this more impressive because it’s a much smaller target and it’s shaped like either a fireman’s nozzle or a fireman’s penis, depending on who you talk too.

Or at least it used to be.

Then some guy did some really cool stunt flying in a shiny red bi-plane without getting killed even once! He was good too, and described what he was doing over his radio which they patched into the loudspeaker system so we all could hear it..

“I’m now going into an inverttteeddddd rooolllllll.. which hassss… about 7 geeeeessss………. ooooohhhh GODDDDDD!!!!! DAYUMMMMM!!!! huh huh uhhhhh !!!!!!!”

When he was done he flew away, then the big show rolled in. It was magnificent! It was powerful! It was MAJESTIC and BEAUTIFUL and there was no stopping it!

IT WAS… FOG!!!

That’s right. Good old San Francisco Bay fog, which has the worst timing in the world because it rolled in from out there on the ocean just as the red bi-plane guy was finishing up his act.

The Blue Angels whooshed in like they owned the damned sky or something, but took one look at that fog and whooshed out again, with their announcer apologetically explaining that there wouldn’t be a Blue Angels show today because it’s “not safe.” It seems those wussys refuse to go head-on at each other at 400mph, 50-feet over the water when it’s in a thick fog bank.

Gosh, they have high standards.

So we got to see almost everything but the Blue Angels, which we saw a little bit of, but only flying in formation and looking down with concerned expressions at the onslaught of fog that was spreading rapidly over the bay and yanking sailing vessels and slower airplanes down to the depths of Davy Jones locker in its icy-cold death grip.

We made a video but it didn’t turn out so great, since it doesn’t have much of The Blue Angels, so here’s my old (okay, she’s not really old) blogging pal Nikki Desuasido with a better glimpse of them doing cool stuff in this video, which was wisely shot the day before we went. Nikki is also more fun to look at than I am, so she gets invited to yacht parties and stuff..

Nice shoes, doll.