All in a Day: It's a bird, it's a plane, nope, just the Blue Angels!

So for those of you that don't know each year around this time is something called Naval Fleet Week. So that I get it right I'm going to borrow from the Internet encyclopedia that is the best thing ever: Wikipedia.
"Fleet Week is a United States Navy, United States Marine Corps and United States Coast Guard tradition in which active military ships recently deployed in overseas operations dock in a variety of major cities for one week. Once the ships dock, the crews can enter the city and visit its tourist attractions. At certain hours, the public can take a guided tour of the ships. Often, Fleet Week is accompanied by military demonstrations and air shows such as those provided by the Blue Angels." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Week Taken 10/10/11) So I know that citation isn't correct for the MLA format or APA for that matter. Please forgive me its been a while since I've had to document a source.

Ok, back to my tale. So Daniel loves all things police and fire related because they are so big and loud. He loves parades and the like. I thought as Daniel was getting ready to leave it might be a nice reprieve from the routine he had gotten into here in San Francisco. Daniel, his cousins, Heather's brother, and father all piled into Andy's ultra cool super high tech-Minivan and headed north towards the water.

San Francisco is confusing with a GPS, I've gotten us lost a couple of times with it on and functioning properly. Sorry to Alan and Karen for that. In combination with the GPS we headed North and just wanted to find a place to pull over. And boy did we. If you get a chance look up the San Francisco Presidio. What a gorgeous location. The San Francisco Presidio was an old fort established in September 17th, 1776. The old buildings were cool and looked to be about WWII era. There were old cannons and cannon balls on display as well. Most importantly it was Saturday so parking was FREE! Parking down here costs an arm and a leg if you can find it. (For those of you that know what or where Fort Snelling is in MN this is similar. Just with the Pacific Ocean as a back drop instead of the Mississippi River.)

After we parked we walked toward the beach and as we rounded a corner I realized where we were and I was pretty amazed. To my right was the iconic Alcatraz prison. To my left, 5,000 yards or less, was the towering, and even more iconic Golden Gate Bridge. This is our third time to SF and Heather and I have yet to cross it and for the most part we haven't seen it very clearly due to the fog or our location in the city. So I was excited to be this close. As if that wasn't enough about twenty minutes after we got there a big, older plane starts a rumblin' through the skies.

This gorgeous metal bird is a C130 Hercules plane dubbed "Fat Albert."

Our view for the show.

So after Fat Alber warmed up the crowd it was time for the big dogs. And boy, oh boy, they did not disappoint. The Blue Angels, the elite of the elite, went back and forth through the sky. Up and down on a roller coaster of loops, twists, twirls, steep climbs only to be followed by steeper dives. It was something else just to have seen this on my own. That would have been cool on its own. I had something better. I had my son with me. That is an automatic joy multiplier. For those of you that aren't around Daniel on a daily basis you're missing out. (Disclaimer: I might getting off on a rabbit trail bragging about my son, cause I'm so proud. Sorry in advance.) So Daniel is one of the most exuberant children I've ever known. He's so smart and always discovering new things daily. What never changes is his enchantment with machines and the things they can do. So to watch him react to each time these planes would simply fly by and make a loud noise with their afterburners was a pleasure for me. I was explaining to someone that while they were practicing on Friday they would fly over the hospital. While Daniel and I would go on walks he would hear them coming and watch them fly over. His reaction was priceless. His screams of "whoa," or "ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh, yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" were bordering on guttural noises and primal animal screams of excitement rather than intelligible words. I think his voice might have dropped a few octaves on a couple of the growls of glee. (K. All done, back to the blog.)

After about an hour of craning our necks and getting whiplash while whipping around as planes whizzed by it was over. We drove home through the Presidio in nearly stand still traffic due to the volume of people. This wasn't bad either because the streets were lined with TREES. Eucalyptus trees no less. They were so fragrant it was a nice change from Nevada's high desert landscape. Finally back to the hospital.

The day was done and back to reality. It was nice to take a break and take time to let Daniel know that in the midst of this I still care. I still enjoy his company. And most importantly I still LOVE just hanging out with him.

Ok this is getting really long and I think I was supposed to go join Heather in 10 minutes, who is nursing PJ, like 20 or maybe even 30 minutes ago. Ooops. Sorry Heather. I know that Heather was planning on putting up more pictures of PJ and doing an update later today so look for that as well. See you guys the next time I post.

And if you haven't figured it out this is Mitch writing not Heather.