Every year Seattle hosts Seafair, a collection of summer celebrations that span late July through early August. The event culminates into a three-day weekend extravaganza on Lake Washington featuring hydroplane races and a screaming Blue Angels air show. Turns out this festival originated in 1950 and has been a cornerstone of summer life for Satellites ever since – huh, who knew!
I was fortunate enough to experience the first day of this festival from the deck of a 120′ yacht. Ah no, it wasn’t mine, but for a small town boy it was quite a treat. We had front row seats to the hydroplane qualification rounds (boats with jet engines strapped to them) which were amazingly quiet considering they reached “bat outta hell” speeds. But the best show was performed by the Blue Angels as they executed an aerial ballet that was nothing short of jaw-dropping. I was awestruck as the planes approached near supersonic speeds and passed just a few hundred yards in front of us – I have never seen anything moving that fast pass by so close. I actually saw the vapor cone (yeah, I just used the words “vapor cone” in a sentence) which apparently occurs when an object is traveling at or above the speed of sound – or so say the genius minds at Wikipedia! Needless to say, it was an experience that I won’t soon forget.
Saturday we didn’t make it down to the water (the weather was just, well, bad) but spotted the planes as they climbed out of their hair-raising maneuvers to gently glide above the Seattle skyline. So we did what we should have done and sat on our balcony with cocktails in hand and snapped a few shots to share!
Fortunately Jen and I managed to make it down to the banks of Lake Washington for the Sunday installment. The weather wasn’t the best so the Angels performed their “low show”. It actually worked out quite nice despite our best attempt at procrastination, as we left the house 30 minutes prior, found a spot and caught the whole demonstration without a hitch! I guess no one can say that city livin’ doesn’t have its perks…
The Vintage Gourmet 