Who brings a Submarine to an Air Show?
Why who else but us?
Sunday, we got up at o'dark-thirty and headed up the 101 to Camarillo Airport and the annual "Wings over Camarillo" air show. Yasee, they have a Car Show as part of the excitement. And exciting it was. In a good way. Meaning no one crashed!
When we arrived, we rolled in the gate and one of the organizers ASKED us "You DO want to be in the parade, don't you?"
Well, naturally...like we'd pass up a chance to show off to the hoards of admirers waiting with baited breath to see such a wondrous...anyway, we said "Yes!"
We wound our way past several parked aircraft, deftly avoiding the forest of helicopter tail rotors (well, two of them) and into our allotted spot. And a great spot it was. Once the planes began zooming about, we had a great view.
And what a great view it was!
We even managed a nice pancake breakfast served up by that group of Aviatrices called "The 99s". Beat hell out of Dennys.
The show opened with a bunch of guys jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, trailing the flags of the various branches of the US military, including, I might add the Space Farce (I wonder if they're paying Gene Rodenberry royalties for using the Star Trek logo?). Then, the US Flag, accompanied by the National Anthem. Really impressive to behold.
After that, various and diverse planes showed off their stuff. Straight forward flyovers by a pair of F18s, incredibly loud...brought back memories of my youth living in Sacramento. We had TWO airbases near by and back then the jet jockeys thought nothing of blasting over head trailing sonic booms. These guys kept it down, but it was still impressive.
They were followed by the Pink Jet, decked out to support Breast Cancer awareness. This was, of course, near and dear to us after Marianne's recent bout. It trailed (of course) pink smoke and was most impressive.
There were also aerobatics. A neat little biplane and later, a GLIDER! We'd never seen anything quite like that. SO ELEGANT! SO GRACEFUL! Instead of the raw craziness of hammerheads, Immelman's, or Lumcevoc's (sp?), these were gentle loops and soaring turns, trailing smoke and to the accompaniment of ballet music from the speakers on the ground. It was BEAUTIFUL! To say the least.
One of the highlights was a WWII Tribute, the best bit was a Gooney Bird (C47) "hanging out the laundry." Now THAT looked cool. More impressive than the usual skydiving malarkey.
The WWII fighters strafed the runway and set off "bombs" with lots of black smoke. Pretty cool stuff.
All the while, we did our usual schtick talking about the Citroen. One guy even went so far as to tell us his wife was a Scouse (slang for Liverpudlian) and her cousin was some guy named Paul. YES, THAT PAUL! It was a lot of fun.
We were NOT the most unusual car there (for once). A pair of guys from Poland (??) had brought their little Aero 1000. A tiny Czech car with a tinier engine. A two cylinder two stroke! Cute little thing!
The parade was a fun affair, we and 49 other hand-selected-by-the-organizers cars cruised out ONTO the flight line and past roaring crowds of onlookers. Well, most of them at least waved.
To top the day off, as we were leaving, the Mig did his thing. RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS AS WE NEARED THE 101! DAMN IT WAS LOUD! AS HE ROCKETED PAST, YOU COULD SEE THE FLAME FROM HIS AFTERBURNERS! Hmmm, where'd I put that Stinger missile?
From there, we took our leave, choosing to beat the traffic across Da Valley (and we DID! Only real bit of traffic were the 101/405, the 101/134, and 134/5 splits. And that was mercifully short lived.
All in all, a really nice day. We heartily recommend hitting an Air Show or two, BUT we did pay a price: STIFF NECKS from all that looking skywards. It's a whole different niche of motorized zaniness and it's a lot of fun!
