The Fleet Week Air Show on Saturday gave me reason to take out my 50-200mm lens—which hasn’t seen this much action since our Maasai Mara safari in Kenya. We had some errands to run early in the day, so we decided to work the Blue Angels into our schedule, scooting down to Fort Mason for front row “seats” on one of the piers.

On the way there, we saw an enormous United Airlines 747 circling the bay at low speed and altitude—a surreal sight to say the least. On the walk from our parking spot to Fort Mason, we saw (and heard) the deafening demonstration of an F-22 Raptor flying straight up, intentionally stalling in midair, and then falling over backwards. Incredible. By the time we got to the end of the pier, the fire-engine red Oracle bi-plane was doing insane tricks over the bay. We saw most of that performance, and then took in the entire hour-long Blue Angels show.