With the long holiday week-end, I had been hoping to sail off to the Islands, but Saturday the wind was rather lame, and as I'm not the sort who likes to sit and listen to diesels rattle for hours on end, it looked like the Islands just weren't in the cards this week. That's a shame, because I haven't even been to the Islands once this summer, and now summer is dribbling to a close.

Instead, it turned out that Steve had scored a bunch of VIP tickets to the Cleveland Air Show on Sunday (his son Chris works at the airport there) and he invited me along with his wife Mary Anne and his friend Rich to go watch the planes zip around. So! Off to the Air Show! The VIP seats were pretty choice indeed, front row right in the center, and of course separated from Cleveland's unwashed masses. The planes indeed did zip and swoop and thunder right in front of us, which was pretty cool. On the other hand, we were also right in front of the announcers- I guess I never knew that Air Shows had announcers, and fact is I really don't think I ever thought much about whether or not Air Shows have announcers, but it turns out they do. And it also turns out that our announcer today was one of the shining lights in that competitive field of Air Show announcers; in fact he was even in the Air Show Hall of Fame. Naturally, I was delighted that there was such a thing as the Air Show Hall of Fame- how wonderfully preposterous a concept!- but I really can't think of any reason for him to be in that or any other Hall of Fame, other than for his preternatural ability to talk non-stop for hours on end.

And talk he did, even when he really didn't have anything to say. Naturally, any Air Show announcer worth his salt will tell you what plane it is currently zooming past, but our boy went far and above the call of duty, showing us why he belonged in the Air Show Hall of Fame by treating us to an endless stream of banalities and noninteresting factoids, yukking it up with tired jokes that he himself didn't even seem to find all that funny (a view shared by the crowd as well, if the conspicuous absence of mirth at what I'll call (for lack of a better word) his punchlines was any indication), and, when all other topics of conversation dried up, he informed us that there were all kinds of food and drink for sale, helpful on the off chance anyone had missed the rows upon rows of concessionaires all up and down the airfield behind us. I'm pretty sure sure he was paid by the word, perhaps with deductions made for any silence exceeding a length of 1.5 seconds.

On occasion, he relinquished his mike to various military spokespeople (the majority of the aircraft flying were military) who tended to be far more entertaining, if (understandably) somewhat given to glorifying the militarism of the whole event, and expounding the martial virtues of honour, duty and sacrifice, and the simple joys of scaring the bejesus out of anyone who lives in any of those benighted backwaters where folks persist in hating America. Indeed, the whole show had the air of a ritualized exercise in conspicuous patriotism, the speakers backdropped by not only the thunder of jet engines but also those sort of stirring patriotic songs that I've always found somewhat tedious. I guess I'm just not wired for patriotism, and I've never even really understood why patriotism is considered a virtue. I did quite like the Army Parachute Team, the Golden Eagles, though, because their name sounds like they're a high school football team.

Still and all, it is quite an awesome thing to see the fighter jets- they streak silently towards you over the lake, then bank and turn and suddenly you are engulfed in a deafening roar, the very ground shaking, and then you look and they are already five miles away. They zoom vertically upward, three miles up in a matter of seconds, silently spinning and tumbling and sparkling in the sun before rocketing back down to Earth, clearing the surface of the lake by mere yards and then accelerating off again. Aesthetically it's all very pleasing. The planes can certainly speak for themselves; I only wish the announcers would have let them.

It wasn't long after the last echoes of the departing Thunderbirds had faded away before the natural aviators of Burke Lakefront Airport returned, squawking sea-gulls returning to feast on the trash strewn all over the ground by the receding tide of Cleveland's aeronautical enthusiasts and patriots.

The wind was blowing strong from the East- I bet a guy could have made it to the Islands in pretty good time today.