Blue Angels

August 19th, 2014. Pensacola, FL.

You are about to see lots of blue, a bit of black and white, and just a touch of yellow.

I didn't get any really close shots, but I came away with several photos that I'm happy with.

One of the Blue Angels' practice runs happened to coincide with my family's visit to Florida, so we skipped the beach one day and took a two-hour drive over to the National Naval Aviation Museum (go ahead and say that out loud). The viewing area was packed, but not having front-row seats wasn't a huge deal since...you know...they were flying above us most of the time. I did manage to get a couple of shots of them on the runway:

So many people. Oooooohhhh, a plane!

There were 6 planes in the air, but usually only the first four flew in a group while the other two did solo stunts and distracted the crowd. The "practice" was awesome. I thought they would fly around for about 20 minutes, do a fancy loop thing and then call it a day, but they were in the air for around 45 minutes and kept everyone guessing the whole time. 

One of their "fancy loop things."

Yes, two of them are upside down.

The Angels are known for their tight flying formation (something like a foot and half between the wingtip of one plane and the cockpit of another), but the best part of the day was when one of the solo planes passed in front of the crowd, and the other solo plane shot over us while our attention was elsewhere. That was the only time a plane flew directly overhead and he scared the crap out of everyone. It was very loud, and it was very, very cool.

One of my favorites. Such a cool day!

One of the few times they all flew together.

We spent a couple of hours in the museum after the show, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen more planes in one place before. It's definitely one of the best free things to do in Pensacola!

These planes were used by the Angels in the late 70's and early 80's before they switched to their current model.

They're suspended from the ceiling inside the museum, and there's a raised walkway that lets you get eye level with them.

An update

Summer 2014. Several places.

Hello happy readers and whatnot. I've been back in America for about a month and a half now and I've got lots to share. We all know how slow I am, so I figured I'd just show off some of my summer highlight reel.

I flew in to Los Angeles with the lady friend and hung out with her family and her visiting-from-Korea host family for a couple of weeks....

Yours truly and some weird chick that wouldn't stop hanging all over me.

Kaley and some of her family  at Huntington Botanical Gardens in Los Angeles.

Kaley and some of her host family jumping and goofing off around the Grand Canyon.

Almost a year after I most recently left, I finally returned home in early August. My nephew seems to like me pretty well and no one forgot my name, so I'm happy. As is my family! We took a week-long vacation to Florida, where everyone but mom and dad spent a lot of time on the beach. Because that's what you do in Florida.

This kid is cooler than your kid.

Me and the bro-in-law spent quite a bit of time doing this kind of stuff.

The family being super duper creepy. I brought back some face masks from Korea and we all tried one out!

For Labor Day weekend, I decided to take a (Mega)bus up to Chicago and visit my cousin and his wife. There was a lot of jazz, wine, youtube-ing, and walking.

It's a beautiful morning, aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!
I've got a night version, too.

Breezing through a month and a half of photos like this has made me all clammy and twitchy, so I'll post more from each of these adventures later. And hopefully not be too slow about it.

Finally, even though I changed the URL to heyiminamerica, I will definitely be going back to my Korea and other Asia photos, so stay tuned!