july 4th weekend [warning - long post]

Finally made the time to get these up and online...as promised, pics and details of an awesome July 4th weekend, with many thanks to Will and Nate. [click on pics to see the larger version]

Friday was chilling and indulging in doing nothing much at all [ahhhh....bliss]. Saturday was wandering, meandering, do what we feel like, including finally making a trip to the Hiller Aviation Museum by the San Carlos airport.

A cool place, very plane-nerdy, lots of hands-on stuff, including a Blue Angels F-18 cockpit you can climb into, and a 747 engine and the front half of the plane that you can explore [holy carp, those things are *huge*]. Pretty cool place, pretty fun time...glad we went.

We spent Sunday afternoon [the 5th] with Nate...he very graciously volunteered to fly us around as he logged some of the required hours for his license.

Nate was awesome...answered all my questions thoroughly and patiently, took us on an awesome loop south along the coast, basically following Highway 1 over Santa Cruz, towards Monterey.


As we neared the Monterey airport [KMRY], we saw four F-16s parked off the taxiway...and just as we pulled the plane up and parked it, they took off one after the other right in front of us [quite literally...we were parked facing the runway, so we got a front row seat to the fun].

That was amazing...the power, the RRUMMMMBBBLLEEE as they went nearly vertical directly in front of us, feeling the bass in your bones. Utter, utter awesome-sauce.

We ate at The Golden Tee in the terminal [and later dealt with the fish 'n' chips fighting back >.< ], then headed back out to the plane to head home. As we taxied towards holding, we saw two F-18s on the taxiway in front of us [squee!!].

More awesomeness...being that close to them, watching them take off directly ahead of us, giggling at the tower telling us very calmly to "be aware that there are two F-18s taking off ahead of you, so there will be turbulence from the jetwash", loving that a little Cessna was taking off right behind frickin' military jets. Can I use the word 'awesome' again???


A straight shot back to KPAO, excellent landing, park the plane, and then back to come down from an incredible weekend. Even stomach/digestive issues from the greasy fish couldn't entirely ruin it...


Thank you, Nate. Any time you need an excuse to go flying, I'm happy to give you one.