Pilot Perspective

I noticed while blogging the last entry that you can insert video to post now. So I'm going to try it. Here is a video I shot this past week while flying back to Atlanta from Fayettville, NC. We were cruising at 22,000 feet, about 500 feet or less above a solid cloud layer. Cool sense of speed that's even better in person. Imagine that. :-) We are traveling at about 450 mph relative to the ground/clouds.

It's 8 megabytes so normally you wouldn't get to see this video unless I happened to be at your house with my camera or a thumb drive in hand. But now I can share ALL of it with you. I have a LOT more flying videos where this came from. Okay, I won't really. But I scared you for a second, right? And yes, the audio/music was just added on the computer. It wasn't playing in the airplane. :-)

Ontario, the one in California

Before I moved to Arizona and my parents to Los Angeles in 2000, I thought the only Ontario was in Canada. Well, there's one in California. And they have an airport. And it's a lot closer to where Stephanie and her boyfriend Ryan (Stephanie is Allison's cousin in case you may not know) moved to about a month ago than LAX.

So we flew over to visit on Saturday morning.

The two of them picked us up around 10:30am and we headed back to their apartment in Brea, CA. After dropping off our stuff and changing into cooler clothing, Steph and Ryan took us on a tour of the local area. They have a cool park nearby with a big fishing lake, paths and such that is free to use. We also saw Brea's town center of sorts which was kinda like Southlake town center but not as big. Twin movie theaters, shops and restaurants.







We had lunch at one of the restaurants and headed back to the apartment. During all this, I was coordinating with my parents regarding dinner. Steph and Allison really wanted to go to the beach so why not put our feet in Marina del Rey sand? According to Google maps that I just checked, it's 45.1 miles and about 51 minutes from town center to town center. Sounds about right.

Ryan had to work on school stuff so the three of us headed over to the coast. We decided to go to my parents' first for a bathroom stop and bumped into them leaving for their kitchen designer appointment, as they are redoing their kitchen. We said hi, and went our separate ways.

The beach was PACKED, big surprise. We ended up having to cave and pay $10 to park at the beach lot when all our normal techniques were exhausted. Allison and Steph hopped out and got drinks at the Cow's End while I waited to get in the lot and park. Our normal beach routine is to park as close to Washington Ave. (border between Marina del Rey and Venice) and then head south to the other end of MdR beach where the jetty and entrance to the MdR marina is.

I've never seen the beach with more people on it. Normally, it's fairly deserted because it's usually all locals. The tourists opt for Venice or Santa Monica. Not on Labor Day weekend. Anyway, here's some photos from the beach:



Candid shot.




More people than I've ever seen on this beach!




The girls at the end of the MdR jetty.


After the beach, we drove around a little. We saw the Venice canals, which are small canals that run through part of the residential area in Venice. There are these small but steep car bridges that go over the canals. Fun to see and drive over! Then we went through Santa Monica, saw Third Street Promenade and of course, Santa Monica airport. Because even if you aren't a pilot, it's one of the coolest places to see planes land & take off due to the vantage point. Click on "Santa Monica Airport" above to see a picture (first one down on the right side) of the vantage point. Century City, Beverly Hills and the Hollywood sign, just barely visible.

We stayed long enough to see several props and 1 jet land, which was only about 15 minutes. By then it was 6pm and time to head back to my parents' for dinner. Dad made his "famous" BBQ chicken wings, which were excellent. We also had grilled squash, red potatoes and fresh fruit. Dessert was a chocolate angel food cake with double-churn vanilla ice cream. Mmmmm! Nothing like a home-cooked meal from your parents. :-)



During the dinner preparations. No, Allison and Steph aren't mad. They're intently listening.




Mmmm, all done!


After some clean up and conversation, it was time to drive back to Brea. Our flight left at 6:50am the next morning so we'd be back in the ATL at a decent time, 2pm. We got first class BOTH ways, which has never happened to me. It's usually only one way. We're enjoying it while we can because come Dec. 1st, we no longer have FREE travel on Delta mainline, only ASA. I know, you're all crying for us. ;-) This is as a result of Delta selling us over a year ago before bankruptcy and they just now decided how to change our benefits. So we're lucky it didn't happen sooner. It'll still be nearly free, $5 per leg per person PLUS $.01 per mile. So our flight this weekend would have cost $24 per person per leg, or 24 x 4 = $96. Hmmm...$96 vs. free. That stinks.

So we enjoyed the free stuff like movies and games, featured on the former Song 757 airplanes which have screens in the back of the seats. Here's Allison partaking in Insane Aquarium, which you can play here if you like. Click on "Play Web Game."




And in closing, a series of fun photos of Vincent in one of his favorite places, the top of the refrigerator.




Hasta la pasta!