Flight paths

On Jan. 25, 1998, the Super Bowl was played at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego (Broncos 31, Packers 24). I heard fireworks in the distance just before kickoff and ran out onto the patio and looked west in the direction of the stadium. Couldn't see the fireworks.

But then I turned around and glanced at the eastern horizon and saw a black slot in the sky, like a slot you would slide an ATM card into to get money. I was not drunk or anything. The slot was moving toward me, getting bigger. It was too late to run for the camera, or to run, period. In seconds, the slot turned into a black Stealth bomber. It flew directly overhead, not even a thousand feet off the ground, huge, blocking out sky like the ship in "Independence Day." It was aimed right for the stadium. I ran back inside and you should have heard the roar from the stadium as it approached and did its stadium flyby. God, I wish I had a picture of that thing going over.

Alta Mira is directly underneath the flight path for stadium flybys. Only once was it the Stealth. Other times it has been four jet fighters. We hear their engines first, then run out and see them in a wide loop to the east, trailing white smoke. Then they straighten out, jack up the thunder, and go over the house toward the stadium at 500 miles an hour.

Last week, it was a blimp, maneuvering before the Holiday Bowl at the stadium. I saw him far to the south, then he turned north, still considerably east of us. But close enough to hope. I ran for the camera and got him just as he was overflying a horizon feature that we call Dolly's Right One.

"Turn left," I whispered at him. I wanted him to take a path that would go right in front of the house. It would be a great picture, and I wanted to see what Gully would do. I do, from years ago, have an ancient print photo of the late, great, Barkeley vigorously warning a Sanyo blimp, that I could have hit with a BB gun, not to come an inch closer. The things puppies get to bark at, when they have the sky for a yard. But the blimp's captain, determined to aggravate puppies to the north of us, stayed on that course until he disappeared behind the bottlebrush tree.

But he did do me the favor of reminding me it was Holiday Bowl day, so 15 minutes before kickoff I was outside with the camera, watching. No jets this time, but there did appear a couple of other aviators. One of them headed for me as if he had it in mind to fly through the front door into our living room. That happens sometimes, with sparrows and finches and hummingbirds, who are relatively easy to corner and scoop up and return to the outdoors. This guy, though, I wasn't so sure.

On he came, magnificent in his control of the air. Then he gave a little left-turn twitch of his tailfeathers, and a slight change in pitch of the pinfeathers at the tips of his wings (maybe for stabilization, maybe just to show off, like jet pilots cutting in afterburners), and he sailed past close enough to rattle me into cutting off the tip of a wing. For a flyby, it wasn't bad.

The sky did give us one little supersonic shot before sundown, a ray finding a Christmas tree ornament and blasting color onto the kitchen ceiling. A promise of flybys to come, I figured.