0 for 2

My love of Aviation can be traced back to the Muskegon Air Show. The show happened every year for as long as I can remember until it met it's demise in 2006. I remember getting all super stoked for the f-14 as a youngster rocking neon pink armed sunglasses (yeah, remember those?) in the searing heat, and watching in awe at the different displays while thinking "I want to do that."

Well this year marked the return of Muskegon's air show with a few changes. First and foremost it is now a much scaled back event that takes place as part of the Muskegon Summer Celebration over Muskegon lake instead of at Muskegon County airport, this is lame because half the fun is seeing the static displays at the airport. I live close enough to Muskegon lake that the F-16, the shows main attraction, flies right over my house. I decided to try to check it out, but being the Muskegon air show purest that I am I refuse to pay $8 to view the thing until it proves worthy of my $8.

The one day I had the chance to go the weather was nasty with cloud ceilings maybe 1,000ft. above ground. I wasn't sure if I should even bother because I was skeptical the show would even happen in those conditions. As I was contemplating, a pair of A-10's flew over and that was all the convincing I needed. I headed out and got to my spot just in time to see a prop stunt plane from afar. Then a B-25 did a couple fly overs, and while I love war-birds well probably more than the next guy, they are a little bit boring after a few low passes at an air-show. Then the Coast Guard did a demonstration and I could not see a dang thing of that. During the display I heard thunder, followed by torrential downpours and I decided to bail. The show finished up a couple hours later after the weather cleared and I was too lazy to try again. Next year they have booked the Blue Angels. I'll pay to see that. I am officially declaring myself 0 in 2 in air show attempts for this summer.

Algonquin for "The Good Land"

For the past 2 summers I have had the chance to check out the Red Bull Air Races in Windsor/Detroit. This year I decided not to go because, as awesome as the Red Bull Air Races are, The Milwaukee Air and Water show was the following weekend and provided an interesting change of pace. A couple things about this scenario that made it an easy choice for me, my brother and sister in law live in Milwaukee and I see them all to little, and the Blue Angels plus an F-22 are on the bill. All that being said I decided to make it happen. I managed to just barely get the time off of work but it was going to be tight. Let me tell you how it was about to go down. I got out of work at 2:30 p.m. on Friday and had to be at work at 11a.m. on Sunday and it would be about a 5 hour drive one way. On Saturday the show was scheduled to start at 10:30 and the Blue Angels were the final act at 3:30. But then disaster struck. Saturday morning, Amber and I woke up and looked out the window too visibility of about 200 feet and an inability to see the tops of buildings.

Milwaukee's tallest buildings aren't THAT tall. Now I assure you I checked Milwaukee's weather before embarking on this journey and that was not in the forecast. We decided to secure our seats in the event that it cleared up, being as how we invested 10 hours of drive time in to seeing this thing. We picked our spots and got our malt liquor on. At about 2 p.m.we called it a lost cause and decided to wander around the town and check out some stores. We made sure we stayed in the general vicinity just in case we heard fighter jets overhead. We never did. So now my decision has proven to be a bad one because instead of getting to see the Red Bull Air Races and Matt Hall attempt to earn his seaplane endorsement, I saw nothing. We ended out the day by getting dinner at the Comet Cafe where I was told I must order this...

Where do I even start with something like this? The bacon Of course...

We said our goodbyes and set forth towards Muskegon at about 8 p.m. which made me nervous for the drive home. The 5 hour drive, after a long day on very little sleep had potential to be disastrous. I decided to see what my Ipod knows and ended up putting on some "Jimmy Eat World" which we coupled with our "screaming at the top of our lungs" vocals. We arrived home at about 2 a.m. When all else fails...