F-15 Fun

For Riga's 808th birthday (sort of -- Riga has an annual city fair every year in August, which is also considered a commemoration of the founding of the city in 1201) the Embassy arranged a special guest: Two F-15 Eagle fighters did a flyover, zipping across the sky above the Daugava. Your correspondent and some associates were given the opportunity to go check out the planes up close and personal, stick our heads (but not cameras) in the cockpit, and chat with the pilots about what it's like to be the real life version of "Top Gun." (Sort of - Maverick and Goose were flying Navy F-14s, but for us non-military types, I'd say that's close enough.)

In any case, the lesson of the day was: cool planes are cool.