Today, while sitting on a boat with my brother and his family, I saw the Blue Angels in action, and what made it so impressive was the speed and the sound. It's one thing to watch them on a screen; it is another thing entirely to see them in real life. It seemed like magic. And the fact that they were flying over water and not over an airport or airbase made them all the more magical. They were disconnected from any aviation infrastructure. No runways. No hangars. No control tower. Just sleek machines painted dark blue and gold, flying over the Severn River.
Reality is always orders of magnitude greater than when it is recorded on a screen. Night and day different. One is reality, the other is...not. And that higher magnitude is vastly more impressive. I thought of the pilots and how they were a part of this reality. What they were doing seemed magical. They were like demi-gods. Elite beyond measure.
