Air and Water ShOWWWWW! Vol. 1 Invasion By Air

So...a string of events.

A little over a week ago saw the 50th Chicago Air and Water Show, or some other anniversary of long running boredom.

I don't get it! Really! Someone please explain. Please?!

Aside from being a celebration of our outdated military industry used for crowd pleasing spectacle, a la fireworks, it has to be one of the most annoying and boring civic events.

Maybe the worst part of it is that you cannot escape it. Chicago is a large town. It's huge. Still, for three days prior to the "event," the jets were "practicing" their stunts. This pretty much translated into scremaing across the Chicago airspace. You could not excape. I live on the far north side of town, but even inside my apartment, you could hear the jets scraping across the sky, over and over again.

Some things you can choose whether or not you want to go. Every event obviously has some appeal to someone, or it wouldn't be held. However, if you did not want to go to, say, the Taste of Chicago (a large annual feeding frenzy downtown), you can simply not go. It's not like the event also flings polish sausages to farthest reaches of the city. Not interested in attending a Bear's game or a Cub's game? Don't go. Movie is the Park? Stay home.

Air and Water Show? Move.

Even sitting in my apartment, with the windows closed, the TV and the stereo turned up, the SSSKRKRKKRRRRRREEEEUEUUUEUUUUUUWWWW of the jets flying by overpowered all.

So, regardless of my desire not to participate in the spectacle of planes flying around, I am trying out this new plan called "Participating in Life."

Now for some reason, this summer has been exceptionally cool. It's like October in San Francisco. For many, that translates into "lovely." For me, that means, friggin' cold. The whole previous week it had been rainy, overcast adn rarely above 70 degrees.

Since I was too much of a wuss to go out on my bike much, I sat around eating and entertaining fantasies of the air and water show getting rained out. What better way to have an Air and Water Show than with large volumes of water falling from the sky?

Needless to say, the weekend weather was beautiful.

On Sunday, my friend Charles called me up to go on a bike ride to meet up with some folks downtown.

I am constantly amazed at my lack of short term memory. Bike Ride Downtown + Large Groups of People Watching the Air and Water Show = HELL. Either I could not remember that this was going on, the above displayed skills at arithmetic were in remission, or I was in absolute denial that people would want to turn out to watch planes and boats do what they do best.

Charles and I set out on our bikes south along the lakefront trail at 9am.