One Helluva Roar

I took a Friday off to take the fam to the DoD-only Air Show at Andrews AFB, before your regular riff-raff get to go on Saturday and Sunday.
After finally finding a parking spot past the undescribed signs for "Blue", "Tan", "Orange", etc. Parking, I finally just stopped and asked a random airman in an orange vest where the hell we were supposed to go.
"General parking is over by the shopping center," she said.
"How about Lieutenant Colonel parking?"
"What?"

The kids enjoyed the static displays of jets and helicopters and WWII planes, but Erin would like to write to her congressman about this "F-22" business with the noise and the loudness and the hurting of the chest.
Still, despite her trying to bury her entire head into my armpit, it was an amazing sight watching that machine do things an aircraft just shouldn't be doing. It maneuvered like a kite.

At the end, it did a final fly-by with a WWII-era P-51, and a Cosby Show-era A-10. Not something you see on your average pay day.
The highlight of the afternoon was watching the Thunderbirds do a twenty-minute show of close- and/or upside-down flying. Got some great pics with my new telephoto lens. I remember taking pictures at previous air shows, you could barely make out the white dots in the sky following small trails of smoke. Now? You can almost see the sweat dripping on the canopy.

So Ryan would very much like to be a pilot now.
Erin fell asleep. My little flower child.