Post Checkride

I had all the best intentions of writing my post checkride blog but got lazy and well... on Sunday, October 26, 2008 I begin again.
I've mostly been flying for fun with my wife making the trek across the San Francisco Bay to various airports North and East. When I was a student pilot my instructor, Bob, would not sign me off to do a Class Bravo transition through San Francisco airspace. He knew I could probably handle it but didn't want to risk his flight instructor certificate if I screwed up. When you are a student your mishaps are blamed on the instructor who signs off on your student cert. So the very first thing I did when I got my private pilot cert, as you might imagine, was to transition San Francisco through the busy Class Bravo. I recently made a fun trip over San Francisco (Class Bravo) to Napa with my friend, Aldo, who owns a great little Italian restaurant in SF called Ristorante Milano. This is a great little trattoria style restaurant on Russian Hill. If you go get the grilled calamari and a glass of Masi Campofiorin - tell him Russell sent you.

I also really like flying across the Bay and over the San Joaquin valley to an old gold mining town, Columbia, in the Sierra foothills. The trip is fun because it takes about an hour each way and gives you a good view of the diverse N. Cal area. The landing at o22 (Columbia) is challenging because airport elevation is around 2,200 ft and also its position atop a small hill gives it that carrier landing feel - minus the pitching deck. (Disclaimer: I've never landed on an aircraft carrier.) When turning from base leg to final approach there is terrain that rises sharply to the left and though not really that close gives you a small twitter in the pit of your stomach. I have had a tendency to come in a little high which makes getting on airspeed - on glide slope - on centerline a little more of an effort. A little paranoia is sometimes good though, keeps you on your toes at least. Once you do land and tie up you take a great little 15 min hike in to town and grab a surprisingly good hamburger at a little shack outside the Columbia Inn.

Back in July my parents came to visit and for reasons I'm still not sure of decided they wanted to go flying with me. So I got a nice, relatively new Cessna 172 with leather seats and a big, instrument panel mounted, moving map GPS unit and off we went. The day was warm and pretty hazy because of all the early fire season forest fires blazing in N. Cal. I flew to Stockton to pick them up and my route of flight was to take them over to Half Moon Bay for a little seaside lunch. My flying was spot on that day and with light winds I didn't have any turbulence to speak of. We flew across the San Joaquin valley and over the Bay to HAF. The haze however made it really difficult to appreciate what would ordinarily be a beautiful bird's eye view of the Bay Area. We landed in Half Moon Bay and it was a real greaser - straight down the centerline with a little flare at the end for a light, asphalt kiss from the main wheels. Half Moon Bay is a great little airport that is situated right on the Pacific Ocean and seems to be fogged in most of the time. The runway is actually quite long and wide so landing there is usually a piece of cake. There is a little hill that separates the airport from the ocean so even if you have screaming crosswinds they tend to tame-out by the time you are ready for the landing flare.

We had lunch at the Moss Beach Brewery over looking the ocean, very niiice - no suds for me though. After lunch we loaded up and I got a Class Bravo transition so we cruised up the coast and came abeam the Golden Gate Bridge for a fantastic SF Bay sight-seeing tour. After cruising along side the GG Bridge I turned and headed to Alcatraz and circled around then over the tall buildings of downtown SF. The weather in the immediate SF area was clear and beautiful, nice! I called up NorCal approach control and got vectored back over San Francisco and then called up the folks at SFO for the final leg back to San Carlos. Yet again I had a great approach and landing on arrival at SQL. It was really one of my best flights and I felt a sense of goofy pride in having ferried my parents around Northern California in an airplane. My folks had a really good time, I think, and perhaps surprised them a bit with my flying proficiency. My father commented to me as we were walking from the plane back to the San Carlos terminal that he did not have 'enough superlatives' to describe his experience flying with me. Nice to surprise them sometimes.

ciao,
russ