I don’t know if being a U.S. Navy Blue Angels pilot is the best job in the world or not, but it’s probably up there. I have to assume it’s at least as cool as being an astronaut, or a 1980s cocaine kingpin.
Half the fun is probably blitzing people on the ground, like we saw today with the scattered umbrellas and canopies in their wake on Pensacola Beach. But even that’s nowhere near as cool as what reader TriggerTX saw as a kid:
I grew up across the road from Miramar in the 80s. All the neighborhood kids would come over to my house and we’d climb on the roof to watch the practices and shows. One of my best memories is during a practice around 1984. We had #5 fly over our house at what felt like 20-feet(probably more like 100-feet) off the deck. His A4 was screaming. And he was upside-down. As he passed over he looked up(down?) at us sitting on the roof. In that briefest of moments we all locked eyes. It was at then that we realized we was waving at us.
He was flying a couple hundred knots, upside down, over our houses, and waving at us. It was at that moment we all realized just how bad-ass these guys were. That story was legend at the school we went to and if I hadn’t had a couple buddies there with me no one would have believed it. I’m sure they’d never do that these days.
That’s fucking awesome.
Congrats on your COTD win, TriggerTX! I hope it instilled in you a lifelong need... a need for speed.
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.