Bombers over Berkley

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Before driving off to Napa Valley (inspired by the little filmette Sideways), we went to have some high-octane fun at an aerial display of the US Navy Blue Angels. Shit those planes are LOUD - I´m sure it´s the pilots who took the silencers off like the boy racers of Essex in their Ford Fiestas. There we were, just moseying along after our quiet tour of the SF Museum of Modern Art, when KA-BOOOM....ROOOAARRRR!!! comes screaming overhead. Never heard anything quite like it, and that second (these days whilst visiting a major American city) goes like this:

"WTF was that....oh no not 9/11 again....
....fook, it's the air force.....what're they bleedin' doing scaring the crap out of people.....
.... imagine the effect on a child now if this was Palestine/Lebanon/Serbia and then BOMBs come down" (I read about how they are traumatised for life afterwards from the sound of the bomber planes)

So it turns out it was the jolly boys of The Blue Angels and there was an air-show in town in fact (click to play some footage above).....so we went along to check it out:




Just kids really.....



Here's one of the Angels tearing across the blue sky






Anyway, I still had to buy some walking boots, and I saw there was an REI in Berkley, which was another spot I'd heard good things about........and indeed, the place does have a nice vibe and is very unusual to me in that it feels quite European around there. Some cool streets and cafes too, besides the nice architecture of the campus itself:

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