Nightglow Window

A Day For Ear Plugs

I'm a tree-hugger, bleeding-heart, mamma's-boy liberal. Proud of it in fact.

But the coolest thing in the world is standing on the flight line at the Miramar Air Station and having a F/A-18 Super Hornet fly over your head at 500 miles per hour.

We battled the traffic to go to the Miramar Air Show today, which I am told is the largest military air show in the world and attracts 800,000 people over its three-day run. It sure seemed that there were that many people in front of us as we waited in traffic for more than an hour before parking. Then we had to walk about a mile and a half to the tarmac. But once I was there, all the hassles were forgotten.

It's so frickin loud that it hurt even with your ears plugged when a Harrier Jump Jet or F-16 turns its afterburners towards the crowd in the middle of a 4G turn. It rumbles all the way through your chest.

We walk up and down the exhibits of military aircraft: A predator drone, F-14 Tomcat, F-16 Falcon, F/A-18 Super Hornet--even the supremely cool F-117 Nighthawk Stealth fighter. There were no A-10 Warthogs that I saw and it would have been great to see a F-22, but it was still a great selection.

We bug out before the Blue Angels go on in order to avoid traffic. (I tend to leave baseball games in the seventh inning for the same reason--unless the score is close.)

The girls were very skeptical about the whole deal at first, but now they are bouncing off the walls talking about it all.


The F/A-18 Super Hornet.


Sydney likes the look of the F-117 Nighthawk.


Sydney tries her hand at piloting a CH-47 Chinook.


The F/A-18 Super Hornet