I've Been Ratzed!

Yesterday I was doing some gardening upstairs on my deck when I heard a rather loud helicopter nearby. Now, this being Brooklyn, one often hears a police / news / weather helicopter buzzing about and not a second thought is spent on it. However, this was really LOUD and CLOSE (a few hundred feet). I looked up and was rather surprised to see Marine One (what the giant helicopter the president uses to shuttle from the White House lawn to wherever Air Force One takes off from, Andrews AFB I guess) buzzing my neighborhood, just about 500 feet above my head.

That surprise was only beaten by the sight of a SECOND Marine One right behind it.... then a third, a fourth, and a FIFTH (I didn't know there were that many). Five full-sized Marine One's doing a tour circle fly-by of residential Brooklyn (they actually did a loop around Clinton Hill, Park Slope, and then headed off somewhere southeast).

I think my grandmother would be somewhat disappointed to learn that after a lifetime of her fetishistic catholic idol worship, I managed to get closer to the Pope than she has while engaging in no greater effort than potting dahlias.

(the photos are not great as I only had my cell phone's camera with me; you can't see all five choppers at once in any of these shots and because of the fish-eye quality of the lens they look a lot further than they actually were)

UPDATE: I'm told the Pope doesn't actually get to NYC until today, so the helicopters I saw were 100% Pope-free. Oh well.. it was still a sight. Perhaps they were rehearsing a route on which to take him for a tour of the city and I'll have another chance later today.