On Sunday morning, I awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed. It was rather enjoyable to wake up in the city and find myself tangled in the sheets with Dan. We did the whole cuddling thing until it was time to get up. He had to be back at school by noon, which required our departure from San Fran to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 11am, so downstairs we went, along with his friends, to find some breakfast. Around the corner and down the block a few strides was a funky organic looking coffee shop/bakery place called the Arizmendi Bakery Cooperative. They had the most amazing selection of fresh pastries, English muffins, scones, you name it. I selected a wacky breakfast pizza type thing covered with goat cheese, mushrooms, and onions on what basically amounted to pizza crust. I love goat cheese. This thing looked delicious. Dan grabbed a scone-like pastry that tasted like really sweet challah bread and out the door we went. We said our farewells to Paul and Jen and hopped in the Mazda. A few turns and traffic lights later and we were heading south on the 280. We could have taken the 101 but 280 from San Jose to San Francisco has got to be one of the most scenic stretches of interstate out there. I mean, there is stuff to look at around every corner, and I do not mean tract housing and billboards. By some grace of god, this road has largely been kept clear on both sides, which allows for some gorgeous vistas. Pay no attention to the fact that I am going about 80 while enjoying all this scenery. And I’m pretty sure that at the time, I was basically driving with my knees while I chowed down on my delicious breakfast pizza thing. All part of my California experiment!

I dropped Dan off at Stanford and headed home to waste a few hours. I am especially talented in this department and found no difficulty at all in making the time disappear in the most unproductive manner possible. Hey, what’s the weekend for anyway? Actually, I did have something planned for later in the day. You see, my good friend Dan, with whom you are all pretty familiar with at this point if you have been reading this blog diligently, has his private pilot’s license. You know where this is going. We were going to go flying!

I was stoked. I arrived at his place around 4:15 and he informed me that the winds were at 20 knots gusting to 30. I knew very little about flying and had never been up in a private plane before, but pilot Dan basically told me that if those conditions persisted, we would be staying on the ground that afternoon. Feeling restless, we decided to take a chance and head to the airport anyway, just in case things changed. As you would expect, it was plenty windy when we arrived. We wandered around the plane for a while, wishing we could take her up for a spin. I had been pretty enthused about the whole flying thing, and once we arrived at the airport and I saw the plane with my own eyes (it was really cool), I was even more excited. What a bummer that we couldn’t go. We decided to go kill some time and come back in an hour, hoping that whatever atmospheric forces were causing the wind would go away.

Since we had time, we went back to Dan’s place and got my car. Out we went with Dan at the helm! He said he wanted to practice driving stick shift, and since I remembered what a joy it was to go out and play in my sister Livi’s manual-transmission Saturn back in the day, I obliged. If he can fly planes, I figured he couldn’t do too much harm to the cute little blue Mazda.

We arrived unscathed at the Palo Alto Airport, where thankfully the wind had largely abated. Dan briefly chatted with some other pilots who were hanging around the small airport and then out onto the tarmac we went. I was pumped! Dan pulled the covers off the plane and went about his pilot business while I ran around and took pictures, trying to make myself look useful and probably failing miserably. Eventually we began the preflight check procedure, which essentially is a step by step checklist that takes you around the entire aircraft, making sure that all the major systems are working properly. This includes everything from testing the many fuel tanks for water contamination to making sure all the lights are blinking the way they should. There was quite a bit more to check on, and about 15 or 20 minutes later the preflight check was finally complete. We did our final walk around, known as the idiot check, just to make sure we weren’t forgetting to untie the wings from the ground or something stupid like that. If I ever become a pilot, I am sure I will at some point try to fly away with the wings still tied to the ground. I guess this step is in there just for me!
We were finally ready to go. In I went, with little difficulty, up into the rather compact but efficiently laid out cockpit. Strapped into the 5 point harness securely, Dan hopped into the seat in front of me. The coolest thing to me was that I had almost all the controls that Dan had in front of me as well! If only I knew what all the stuff actually did. He did try to explain some of it. We were flying in a somewhat unusual aircraft known as a tailwheel plane, which has three wheels as you would expect. The difference is that there are two in the front and one swiveling wheel in the back. Imagine a tricycle in reverse. Although this was Dan’s first solo flight in a tailwheel, he assured me that his months of training in this aircraft more than prepared him for our afternoon cruise over Silicon Valley.

Right he was! I was really impressed with his knowledge and confidence about the entire flying thing. As we taxied towards the runway, Dan radioed the ground control folks in pilot-speak, a complicated (to my ears) but efficient means of communication between the pilot and the traffic control people. In between talking to the control tower, he gave me explanations of everything that was happening.

We paused just before the runway to do our run-up, which appeared to me like basically opening the throttle all the way and standing on the brakes to make sure everything is working right one last time before you set off to become airborne.

Well you know what comes next. The huge propeller on the front of the plane spun up and before I even knew what was happening, we were blazing down the runway and the tail was lifting off the ground. In tailwheel planes, the back wheel rises off the ground before the front ones. I had scarcely processed this sensation before we were off the ground completely, climbing at a surprisingly rapid rate. I will confess that I get a little motion sick from time to time, so the next minute or so was spent trying not to throw up while checking out the awesomeness of the world below me, which was becoming farther and farther away with every passing moment. “The world looks so much cooler from up here,” I spoke into the intercom to Dan. It really did look incredible, in a way you can’t quite grasp from the tiny windows on commercial airliners.

We headed out from the runway turned west towards the ocean, passing over such recognizable landmarks as IKEA, which was of course the largest and most easily identified building for miles and miles, along with the Stanford campus and the 101, which snaked off to the south until I could no longer see it anymore.

In a few more minutes we had escaped the valley and were flying smoothly around 2000 feet, over some of the most amazing looking mountains I had ever seen. To be honest, they we probably more like big hills. But amazingly big hills at that! Over every hilly acre below me stretched gorgeous green growth, giving the entire area a soft appearance like someone had thrown an emerald colored blanket over what were once more jagged peaks, smoothing them over.

Finally, we made it to the Pacific Ocean. Out over it we flew. It was wonderful. I was pretty much speechless. I had finally made it to the Pacific, after 21 years of life. What a momentous occasion this was, for someone like me who is so in love with the ocean. The beach looked entirely different from the Atlantic coast that I am so familiar with. For one, where were all the beach houses? There were not dozens of houses lining the beach as there always seems to be on the east coast. And the waves, enormous in appearance even from our altitude, came in from far off the shore. And the cliffs…yes, there were cliffs, giant and magnificent! I took photos the whole time.

Dan showed me some tricks he knew, such as how to get the plane to go into a stall, as well as how to do some really quick turns (talk about high g-forces!). The plane rolled steeply to one side and we spun around rapidly, changing direction so fast that I could barely keep my arms up in front of me to take photos. What fun!

Eventually we turned back toward the east, heading for the airport and beginning our descent. Dan began his intricate song and dance with the air traffic controllers as we requested permission to land. We again flew over IKEA as we began our approach. I was rather excited to experience a landing in one of these tiny planes since I never had before. Furthermore, the landings in these tailwheel aircraft tend to be rather interesting, since the reversed three wheel configuration makes the plane inherently unstable on the ground. Again, imagine riding a tricycle in reverse. At 60 miles per hour. Even the most minute of steering inputs could send this baby wobbling across the runway if Dan wasn’t careful.

Lucky for us, he was up to the task. We landed rather smoothly for his first solo flight in a tailwheel, and taxied smoothly back towards the parking area. I had the biggest smile going, if not on my face then somewhere on the inside. What a great way to spend some time, wandering around the sky above everyone else.

Dan taxied over to the space where are plane belonged and cut the engine. He pushed the lightweight aircraft backward into its space and I hopped out. I was still a little disoriented from the ride but delighted nevertheless. My first private plane experience had been an excellent one. We covered the plane back up and headed back to the car. We were both starving, so off we went to a Thai restaurant in Palo Alto. As it turns out, some dumplings along with a dish of fried beef and Chinese eggplant provides the perfect finale to another awesome weekend in California.

Click the link below to see the rest of the photos from this weekend not featured in the blog.

http://www.somepicturesitook.com/3-16-08gal