Boats and Planes Galore

With a couple deviations, the focus of this trip has been primarily boats and planes. I guess Seattle is really the best place for that. It's the home of Boeing and it's surrounded by water. Yesterday we spent the day at one of the biggest events that takes place in Seattle. It's called SeaFair. The real purpose for this event is the hydroplane boat races. I've seen short clips of these boats racing on TV in the past, but unfortunately it's usually been on those "Worst Sport Disaster" programs. I never really watched a race before and I certainly never got within inches of these so-called 'boats' with jet engines onboard. I mean they are literally JET engines. When these things start up, you would swear you were at the airport.


So it was a pretty neat experience to have pit access to where all the boats were stored and put in and out of the water. One of our customers (the guy that I interviewed a few days ago) just happens to own the #1 boat in the racing world. And coincidentally enough, it's driven by the most winningest (yes, that's a word) driver of all time. Such a shame that I really don't follow this sort of thing, otherwise it would probably have been a much bigger thrill to hang out and chat with him.


We got to watch the boats get hoisted by huge cranes in and out of the water as they sped through their qualifying laps. We even got a secondary "hot pit" pass that allowed us through more security gates and go right up to the boats and even put our toes in the water. This wasn't such a great thrill as far as the boats go, especially since we spent most of our time directly under one of those huge cranes, but it did get us the best view of the air show.

Standing directly under the crane.

The Blue Angels were in town for this event and getting to see them take off a couple of days ago was just the warm up to the air show. We were right at the shore of Lake Washington to watch the amazing show. I'm still kicking myself for not bringing my long lens. Some photographer! I just didn't think I would get the chance to take fun photos outside of work. Oh well, with a little cropping I got some decent shots (that still need lots of photo editing).


And if I thought the screaming jets were loud, check out our ring side seats, in BACK of the jet engine boats. No, that wasn't loud at all . . .


And speaking of planes, I get to take a ride in one tonight. I'm very much ready to fly home. Today will be a long day waiting for my 11:30 PM flight, followed by my 4 hour layover in Detroit. Yeah! I wish I could just click my heels . . .