Well, I went upon the roof yesterday to watch the Blue Angels. I didn’t have to be at work until 5 and the show was from 3 to 4. I thought it would be dumb to not use one of the benefits of living where we do. The weather has been warm – really warm, 85 in SF – but I thought  the breeze would come up and the fog would come in as it usually does at the end of the second hot day so I put on my work clothes instead of the shorts I had been wearing. Hot and still it was on the roof. Hmmm . . .

We got up there early and saw something called an ‘F35 demo’ which was one military jet flying around and doing some interesting things. I wondered if that was the same type of plane that went missing a couple of weeks ago after the pilot bailed out. Later, at work, someone told me the US has spent one Trillion dollars! on developing that airplane and it can’t even do some of the things its predecessor can do. It does a lot of things: it flies fast, it flies slow, it goes straight up, it hovers. Whatever.

Just before the BAs came, we saw the BA support plane fly by a few times. It’s a C-130. The C-130 is a four engine prop plane that’s been around forever. I built a plastic model of one when I was about 12 so I thought it was cool.

Oh, yeah, there was a flyby of a United 777. That’s a big airplane after looking at little military jets. No barrel rolls or flying straight up but it did some cool things. It was interesting how quiet it was compared to the war machines.

Eventually the Blue Angels appeared in the distance. There was a group of four plus two others who did kind of solo stuff. The main group came up from the bridge along the waterfront but suddenly one of the soloists came from behind Telegraph Hill. Right. Over. Our. Heads! Ho-lee shit!!

I tried to get some pictures but taking pictures with a cell phone in bright sunshine is highly problematic especially when your subject is traveling at 500 miles per hour.

So, the Blue Angels did all the things that I expected. The flying was amazing. After about ten minutes, I found myself in tears. I still don’t know exactly why. Maybe it’s that humans can do amazing things but it’s too bad so much has to be for the purpose of killing other humans.

We left early because the show had started late and we had to get to work. We went down the elevator to the roars of jets overhead.