You need to go to Oshkosh.

If you've never been, and you like airplanes, you truly owe it to yourself to go to Oshkosh. (Sorry, I know it's officially called "EAA Airventure", but I can never bring myself to say that.) We've been going since the mid-eighties. Since we got a plane, we've been camping there under Redbird's wing about every other year.

This convention and airshow are actually directly responsible for my wife and I becoming pilots. She'd never really thought much about aviation, but watching the aerobatics acts, you could just see the wheels turning. "I wonder if those guys give rides", she murmured. "I wonder if they give...lessons." Two years later she had her license and started her aerobatics course. And of course, it was only meet and just that I fly too; gotta make sure I can talk the girl's lingo. >;-)

It was the Christen Eagles Aerobatic Team who lit us off; all hail to Charlie Hillard, Tom Poberezny, and Gene Soucy! I wonder how many other people they inspired to start flying in the 25 years that they performed. One Oshkosh I remember in particular was so rainy, foggy, and overcast that the formation acts really couldn't go up safely. Instead, Gene Soucy flew solo, and improvised a performance of such haunting grace and beauty that I can only compare it to a virtuoso jazz pianist's. He closed with a swooping, inverted falling leaf maneuver; at the apex of the last arc, he flipped the plane neatly and sideslipped in to land. The audience was so stunned that they didn't even applaud until he opened the canopy.

I only regret that I never thanked the three of them before Charlie's death in a crash in 1996.

When my goddaughter was three, her parents brought her to the show. Understand, now, that something on the order of 7,000 assorted aircraft attend; for one week, Wittman Regional Airport is hands-down the busiest in the world. Five minutes onto the grounds, she gasped and pointed. "WHAT?" we cried, whipping our heads around to look for the crash or oncoming F-16 or whatever. "PLANE!" she lisped.

This went on every two minutes for the entire day. At one point she encountered a bright yellow little biplane on static display and circled it round, and round, and round..."Pellor! Trut! Wing! N'or trut! N'or wing!"

By 2 PM, she had collapsed exhausted on her dad's shoulder. But suddenly she popped erect to point and shriek: "BIMP!" Sure enough, a dirigible emerged from behind a hangar at a take-no-prisoners deck angle, thrumming upwards.

She's in college now. But she still brings prospective boyfriends for airplane rides now and again.

I shot this picture at the 2005 show. This is the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team, who fly North American T-6 Texans and are my favorite formation act these days. (The G-Dub has an autographed poster.) Every time I hear those four big radials hollering around a barrel roll, I get goosebumps.

Go to Oshkosh.