The photo was taken a couple of days before the California Capitol Air Show. We work really close to Mather AFB and got to watch the pilots practicing… chasing the shouting wind along.

One of the things that helped me get through the Air Force Academy was a poem that we were required to learn as freshmen – High Flight, by John Gillespee Magee Junior.

Here it is, along with a link to a choral version done by the AF Academy Cadet Chorale (I was in the Cadet Choir while I was there – singing this song was exhilarating – sort of helped keep things in perspective. I still get chills when I hear this, some 18 years later)

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

http://www.usafa.af.mil/superintendent/pa/highflight.htm