Thursday, August 13, 2009.  When writing that “headline”, I thought it might be a little deceiving.  I’m not really writing about an Air Show, but the air show that always seems to be happening over my house.  It’s one of the reasons I like living in Lake Country.

Our location somehow puts us in a major air traffic path.  Frequently, you can look up in the sky and see five or more trails of cottony puffs left behind by big, old jet airliners.  Our view also includes flocks of loud honking geese flying north. Or is it south? Sometimes it seems east, or west.  Helicopters show up every couple of weeks, sometimes so low you can read what’s on the chopper. (I always start humming the M.A.S.H. theme, much to my family’s dismay.)   

Once, we actually felt like we were being swooped by a fast low-flying helicopter.  I thought the pilot was drunk. We almost called in his license number, which my husband wrote down because he could actually see it!   However, my sister said it was probably someone learning how to maneuver the helo (military talk taught to me by my niece) and they were using the area because it was so open.  That could explain a lot, especially the red baron-looking planes that sometimes fly over and do loops in the air.

Occasionally, we’ll see Wright Brothers type contraptions with a single pilot.  I’m not sure how anyone sits in those and fly, since they are always at an altitude that is too high to really notice.  How they start and where they land is also a mystery, since I thought you always jumped off a cliff with those.  I think they are just always up there.

Oh, and last week I was awakened at 4am by a loud low-flying plane going over our house.   My husband said that was “one of those Cessna’s that always flies over around then, probably someone coming back from the EAA.”  OK

Excluding the big sky at night performance, where you can see most of the constellations— including a giant sized big dipper right in our backyard—my hands down favorite is the hot air balloon.  They are slow moving and sometimes so near to the ground you can hear the whoosh of the flames in the silence of the air.  Every now and then there are two or more.  Always colorful!  And sometimes landing so close, you can run to them and see them touchdown and deflate.

 It’s really peaceful and one of my favorite things about Lake Country.