One of the senior missionary couples in San Diego invited the rest of us to join them in the Miramar Flightline 5k, which is an annual five-kilometer race hosted by the Marine Corps on their air base at Miramar. That location was made legendary by the classic movie Top Gun, so it was pretty cool to go onto the base and see some of the sites from the movie.
We met up with the two other missionary couples before the race started.
As they’re all twenty years our senior, they elected to walk the course. Pepper and I ran. The morning started out nice and cool but temperatures quickly rose into the 80s so it was a warm run. (Of course I couldn’t help but think of the 110-degree day happening back in the valley, so the 80s seemed downright comfortable!)
After the run, we wandered the tarmac to look at all the cool aircraft. This particular base is home to a squadron of F-35 Lightning fighters, arguably one of the biggest, most wasteful boondoggles in government history.
The Ospreys are cool.
I’ve always liked the F-18 Hornets, although I admit the F-15 Eagles remain my favorite fighter planes.
They had a C-130 Hercules cargo plane too.
And even a Super Stallion:
There was also a pretty cool pace car!
Behind me in the photo above is a little Marine Corps band. They were playing classic 80s music, and even managed to sneak in the Top Gun anthem (played at the start of the movie) and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”. Awesome.
I don’t actually enjoy running at all… the only reason I enter events like this is for the event itself. I ran the Bolder Boulder seven times, starting in 1998, and it was always a blast (except the running part). This was no exception: we had a grand time and were happy to spend a few hours with a few thousand runners.