My stepson, an Operations Manager at Atlanta-Hartsfield Airport, got us tickets to see the Thunderbirds just hours before the air show in Peachtree City, Georgia sold out last weekend. We’ve seen the Blue Angels several times with him, but the Thunderbirds were a first.
Despite the heat, the swarming traffic (shuttle bus service from parking lots), and the throngs of people, the show was amazing! I wasn’t sure whether they would allow umbrellas into the event (they did), so I didn’t take one – – instead, I brought a thin scarf I’d purchased in Europe to cover my head and neck to divert heat and avoid sunburn. I realized during a demonstration of a WW2 plane that the scarf I’d purchased in Germany…..had Berlin written all over it and had images of the Brandenburg Gate and made me look a bit like I was wearing a religious head covering to an air show, standing there next to my husband who’d grabbed the beat up Indiana Jones hat he wears out on the tractor.
I was wearing my darkest sunglasses and trying my best to prevent a bout of vertigo with the interplay of the heat, the light, and noise, and the disorienting focus of trying to keep my eyes focused on the show jets overhead, to the left, to the right, right side up and upside down.
We don’t get out much. We have now become the strange people we’ve always wondered about.
we stood all day in sweltering heat
at the Peachtree City airport
just to see the Thunderbirds
and what a show it was!
the roar of the jets
can’t be described
only felt
in your
soul
Common Threads 