2012 MCAS Miramar Airshow

I mentioned in my Friday Blog Hopping post that we might go to the airshow this weekend. We haven't been to an airshow in about ten years. Honestly folks, if you've never been to one, you should definitely go. They're neat and good PR for the military, but, they're pretty much all the same. I've been to five that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm a little ho hum about them at this point. The Mister could really care less. Aside from the Blue Angels, he sees aircraft take off, land, and fly around five days a week. Still, the kids hadn't been to an airshow that they actually remembered (the Oldest child slept through the first one she went to while the Youngest was blissfully unaware being in utero) so we sucked it up and took them to the show on Sunday.

Traffic getting on base was crazy stupid. It took us 1 1/2 hours to get to the flight line. This is normally a 10-15 minute trip. However, while we were stopped in traffic on the freeway, I took these pictures (click to make bigger):

Once we actually got on base, we had to park. The base pretty basically shuts down for the airshow. It's an essential personnel only type of weekend. The Mister got off of work early on Thursday and didn't work at all on Friday. This is because they use every available parking lot on base for people to park. This means that we parked clear on the other side of the base from the flight line and then had to freaking walk over a mile to get to it. I made a very wrong choice of shoes for this day. In my defense, the last time we went to this airshow, I didn't remember having to walk at all. The Mister pointed out that I had forgotten an essential detail:  He used to work at the Visiting Aircraft Line the first time and we had VIP parking passes. Oh. Yep. Forgot that totally. So, while being herded towards the flight line with dozens of other spectators and Marines constantly yelling, "STAY ON THE SIDEWALK!!", I fell on my ass because of my shoes. Talk about humiliation. I don't remember the last time I fell in public. I really just wanted to turn around and go home but as a parent, you suck it up and move on. ::sigh::

The show itself was good. We saw planes and jets doing their thing. The Harrier was neat as always.

Harrier hovering

And the Blue Angels were awesome. The kids had a fantastic time and that's the really important part and why we went at all. I was dirtied, bloodied, bruised, and scraped but whataya gonna do.

The highlight of the day was that the Mister took us to his unit's headquarters building so that we could use their restrooms instead of having to use the porta potties like all the other animals. The low point was falling on my ass like a moron in front of dozens of strangers. Walk much lately??