I know this isn’t really very Great Outdoorsy, but it was cool.
We were down in Colorado Springs last week while my son was shooting in the Junior Olympics, and I went down to the restaurant one night to get some drinks to take back to the room. I was standing in line to order behind a guy wearing a shirt that said “F-22 Raptor Demo Team,” so I asked him if he was in town to actually do a demo of the F-22. He said he was, and that the next day, they’d be flying over the Air Force Academy.
That was perfect timing. My son had his first relay earlier that morning, and his next one wasn’t until the following day. So the day they were doing the demo was Logan’s free day, and we didn’t have anything else we had to do. So that next morning, we cruised over to the Academy and followed the traffic over to the athletic center. We knew we were in the right place, because what appeared to be every cadet enrolled at the Academy was lining the balconies of the giant building just past where we parked.
Then we heard the jets coming. They had two F-22s fly over first, then a single Raptor thundered in overhead and spent about 20 minutes showing what that incredible aircraft was capable of. The cadets had a great view, but ours was even better. Where we happened to park was directly under where that plane was flying.
My son described the noise as being smothered between two huge, heavy pillows that were screaming at top volume. In other words, it was awesome.
