Air and Water Show

Last weekend was the 52nd annual Chicago Air and Water Show. The CAWS is the largest and oldest free admission air show in the world. I've always enjoyed the air show, but even more so now that my brother is a fighter pilot (see picture to the right). You can imagine the street cred I get during the air show when I bring that up. Since we moved from Hyde Park to Lakeshore East (our current neighborhood), we've been able to watch the Air part of the show from our apartment which is awesome! Last year, however we walked down to see the show close up and when the super loud, super fast F-16 started tooling around the city, I was sure to mention to strangers, "You know my brother is a Marine Fighter Pilot". I'm pretty sure if I was single this would work as a pick-up line. Sorta the female equivalent of males having cute puppies. Kind of a "love my dog, love me" or, in my case it would be "love my brother, love me" phenomenon.


Another highlight of the show is the Blue Angels. The Blue Angels are a Navy flight demonstration team, created in the 1940s to keep up public interest in Naval Aviation. They fly in formations, do stunts, and generally please the land based crowd. They currently fly Hornets (the type of plane changes over time). The Blue Angels do all kinds of fly bys directly past our building which is very cool, and downright convenient on a hot day like yesterday:)




My brother, Garrett, flies Prowlers. One of the many things Prowlers specialize is is "jamming" electronic signals in enemy territory. For example, Prowlers can jam remote detonation devices, preventing bombs, etc from going off.

A couple years ago, Garrett took me up in one of his training planes. It was so fun! He went pretty easy on me- I'm pretty sure he could have easily made me very sick if he wanted to!

Garrett taking me for a ride over Whidbey Island.

Garrett with Mom and Dad at his winging in Meridian, Mississippi.

Me in the co-pilot seat, flying over Whidbey Island.