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| US Patriots Jet Team |
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| Michael Wiskus, Team Lucas Oil, doing a loop-de-loop. |
We ventured out Friday evening to see the
Oregon International Air Show. The evening show is very different from the day shows. The day shows have more acts that are spaced out to last the whole day, so that everyone can explore all the vendor booths, and wait in very long lines for the "Honkin' Huge Elephant Ears". The evening show instead offers only brief breaks between performances (once for a private jet to land- those folks must really be bigshots). The sunset was just spectacular, as was the moon, and once it grew dark, we were treated to three light shows. The first was an airplane emitting trails of colored sparks and ejecting fireworks, followed by a plane that did a complex lightshow while doing stunts. Next there was a fireworks show combined with pyrotechnics. These were gigantic fireballs, in various colors, exploding into big black balls of smoke. The audience could actually feel the heat.
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| US Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier |
We got to see the US Patriots Jet Team, doing precision maneuvers that made everyone gasp. A US Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier was there, flying at supersonic speeds. Jasper has been learning about thunderstorms, and how you can determine how far away the storm is by counting the seconds from when you see lightning, traveling at the speed of light, to when you hear the thunder, traveling at the slower speed of sound. But since we live in Portland, he's never observed this in real life. It was pretty neat to be able to point out that the same phenomena is demonstrated by the Harrier. You see the Harrier coming towards you in complete silence, and it takes a few seconds before you finally hear its roar, since the light reflected from the Harrier reaches your eyes before its sound reaches your ears. After impressing us all with its speed and agility, it stopped in midair, and then slowly turned in place in a circle. Wow!
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| Amanda Franklin on the wing! |
My favorite act was Kyle and Amanda Franklin, a husband and wife team. They are both pilots, but for their act, he flies the plane and she wing-walks all over it. They both wore pirate costumes and at one point flew low to the ground and crossed swords. How romantic!
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| US Patriots Jet Team |
The Air Show is undeniably cool, but it tends to make me philosophical. The US military has a big presence there. It's excellent public relations, and gives thousands of small kids the idea that being in the Air Force and Marines would be really glamorous. And now I'm the mother of one of those small kids, and I'm in charge of preparing him for his future. What would that mean if it included military service? I am the daughter of a man who was raised in the Quaker tradition his family had followed for at least 300 years, a tradition that is staunchly pacifist, a tradition that holds that killing is wrong, with no exceptions. My father was also a WWII veteran who was awarded both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He had a choice to become a conscientious objector, a choice not many men had, and he chose to enlist. I know he was proud of his choice. He didn't talk about his military service often, but it irrevocably scarred him. His body healed, but those experiences cut him deeply. My son is too young to understand the moral and political complexity of war. But he's not too young to see that fighter jets are cool. So his experience of the air show was prefaced by a brief talk from his mother about how military service is much more complex than getting to fly cool planes. (For whatever it's worth, I suppose.)
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| Fireworks shot from an airplane. |
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