Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Military Industrial Complex

I've been meaning to blog this for awhile. When we stayed at the Luminhaus (I'm beginning to sound like a broken record) we were awoken in the middle of the night by the most outrageous roar. Took it happening a second time a bit later to realize that some military aircraft were flying what must have been RIGHT OVER the house, and I mean spitting distance away. Gets the adrenaline going to wake up that way at four in the morning.

Fast forward a year to last summer and Craig and I are sanding cedar before the house has even arrived. The sanders are loud, and Craig has on ear muffs AND his ipod. I'm going au natural. And with no warning at all two jets streak right over our heads, and again I mean RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS. Couple hundred feet about us, tops. Insanely loud. They're gone in an instant, and I look over at Craig and realize he hasn't heard or seen a thing. Later I asked some of the guys working on the foundation about it and they said it's not uncommon for jets to run the valleys, often below the ridge tops. It's happened a few other times when I've been out there (including a not-so-subtle wake-up call at 6 or so last week) and whatever you may think about our $450 billion dollar defense budget, I have to say that it is awesome - in the very literal sense of the word - to get buzzed by one of those things. And I suppose I should add this scenario to the "What to do if..." section of our little instruction book for guests.

2 comments:

Jake said...

On my way biking down I saw one of those jets go flying by too. It was inbetween Romney and Moorefield, on a backroad in the valley called South Branch Rd / Trough Rd (it's the same valley that the historic train ride from Moorefield runs through). The jet was just a couple hundred feet overhead, it was wild to see it. Where are they coming from? Virginia?

It seems every time I'm in a rural area I run into fighter jets. I was hiking up some mountains in Switzerland and a fighter jet actually flew below us!

Chris said...

I was told they come from Langley AFB, which is down near Virginia Beach. Everybody likes the mountains...