This is always a must for us. We usually go for a couple of days, enjoying summer's last gasp as it were. Usually one day is pretty much occupied with the Air Show. It's always worth seeing, a good four hours, all kinds of planes. This year featured the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels ariel demonstration team, the first time they've been to the CNE in about twenty years.
I've never seen the Angels fly, so it was a treat. We're big fan of the Snow Bird's, Canada's demo team and the Angels routine was a lot like that .. only way faster.
You have to admire the skill of the pilots, hurtling these jets around the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, passing so close to one another that you'd swear that they can count each other's blackheads.
I know that these planes are flying guns, but watching the demo, these skilled pilots made these huge, roaring, complex machines into something graceful and perhaps even organic.
So, that's the Blue Angels .. cool, cool. I liked watching these planes, there is a beauty to their design and an undeniable skill to the pilots who fly them. Still, these jets were designed to be weapons. They are, in fact, flying guns. And that brings us to something completely different. This, is the Raptor.
This may be the scariest plane I have ever seen. The Raptor is not a flying gun, the Raptor is Flying Armageddon. This plane does things no airplane should be able to do. It hovers, it floats around like a leaf, it stands on its tail and flies backwards ... all, loaded with enough firepower to turn your favorite nation (and all its peoples) into a puddle of hydrocarbons.
The young Air Force officer who did the Raptor's play by play was quite enthusiastic; when he went on about how the Raptor was the deadliest single thing ever conceived or created by man or any other creature, I swear I could hear him drool. The Raptor is an amazing thing to watch fly, it really is, but I just can't help get a little queasy watching it, and realizing that if the pilot decided he hated Canada, he could have wiped out my city in the blink of an eye. Yup. Scary.
But the C.N.E. is not all about supersonic jets and world-destroying potential. It is, after all, a fair. A big ass fair, but a fair nonetheless. Like most fairs in North America, this one started off as an agricultural exhibition. You can still find those roots in the horse shows and Farm building .. though it ain't no barn. It's a sparkling clean convention hall. With critters. Here's a pic of sheep; this is for my two dogs. This is basically border collie porn.
Besides critters, another thing fairs are known for, are "attractions" The one thing the Ex has been doing in the last few years is bringing back some of the old fashioned carnival attractions. Last year (they returned this year as well) they brought in an escape artist. This year, they brought in a stunt man and his "wheel of thrills"
So what this is, is a huge wheel on the end of a gigantic lever, that when pushed, swings him 60 feet up in the air. The wheel itself spins, and homeboy tosses himself around on it.
The guy was a true showman, wobbling and gasping and making us feel that at any minute he could plunge to the earth. I think that most of this was artifice. But hey, the man was 60 feet in the air, no net, no air mattress.
OK, so we have airplanes, sheep, guys jumping on big ass wheels, what else does the CNE have? Well, food of course, but we don't have pics nor video of that. But it does have shopping. We like the International Pavilion, with booths representing countries from all over the world.
The Canadian Armed Forces had a display as well, lots of hardware and shiny guns and big broad shouldered guys in uniforms.
They had a pretty cool mountain rescue demo where they rigged lines about 80 feet up and traversed a stretcher with attendant down it, as well as a suspicious flying polar bear.
The other attraction we saw, was this cool portable wave machine, that you could pay 25 bucks to ride on with surf boards or wake boards.. or perhaps try to ride is a more apt description. Luckily, they brought a couple of pro riders to give us an idea of what you can actually do on the wave. Check out the video for their demo.
Before we get to the video, I want to comment on the pics here. Collette took them. Collette takes the majority of the pics that appear on this blog and I don't often credit her for them. You want to see weak ass pics, check out this post with myself as the photographer. All the good pics Collette takes and they definitely improve whatever sad quality this blog may have.
Now to the video. Highlights of the Air Show, couple shots of the midway, the Canadian Forces display the wave riding machine. Hidden within, is a clue to a future gift of a special friend of ours. A couple of songs here, including Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits, appropriate to the subject matter and a nice reminder of the Making Movies CD, one of my favorite recordings of all time, and something I haven't listened to in years.
CNE 2009 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.
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