Here's a shot of the left wing while we were over the central valley. You're probably wondering what's up with this shot. Well, you can't see it because my camera sucks ass, but there was a huge bee or yellowjacket or something that got smushed on the leading edge of the wing as we took off out of Chino -- and an hour later the thing was still there. I don't know why, but I got a kick out of that. Oh, well.
Still over the flat sections of the central valley.
Here we were roughly over the 5 freeway, somewhere around Avenal.
Despite the tunes on the ipod blasting, Jen was asleep, and I was just taking pictures of whatever.
Zzzzzzzz.
She falls asleep so easily in the plane.
I manage to make dumber looking expressions every time.
I must be bored of flying in a straight line or something...I'm taking pictures of the baggage. It was piled way up back there, all the way up to the seat back bulkhead. We were bringing all the camping stuff for Jen, plus she decided to empty out the fridge of all the perishables and bring that crap...plus her three bags, backpack, etc., etc. I swear we had less stuff when we went cross-country for two weeks.
I think this shot was taken somewhere southwest of Harris Ranch. We usually stop in there and snag some of the best filet, but not today.
We fought headwinds all the way up to PAO. We were getting low 160s groundspeed. I won't whine about 160 knots, but...yes I will...it's SLOOOW.
Forgot to take the camera off macro mode again, but you can kind of see the terrain picking up a bit as we got toward Panoche.
Can't complain...an hour and forty five minutes from Chino to Palo Alto. The coolest part of the trip was the low approach at Moffett. Normally approach will hand me off to Moffett tower as I transition their airspace in the descent for PAO. This time, the conversation went like this...
Me: "Good afternoon, Moffett tower, experimental RV N714D is with you at 2500' transition Palo Alto."
Moffett: "RV 714D, transition approved. What type of RV?"
Me: "We're an RV-7."
Moffett: "Oh, haven't seen one of those before."
Me: "Yeah, there are only 100 or so flying so far."
Moffett: "Did you just finish yours?"
Me: "Just started flying it in March."
Moffett: "Do you have time for a low approach?"
Me: "Happily."
Moffett: "RV 14D, cleared low approach at or above 100'."
Bitchin! I descended down to 100 feet off the deck and did a fly-by. "Very nice," the tower commented as we passed, and they gave me the frequency change to Palo Alto tower. It actually worked out great, because the climb back up from 100' allowed me to slow down easily and make space for a Cessna Skydog on final for 31. Normally coming straight into 31 you have to start powering back way in advance, but this worked out nicely.
After dinner with my mother, we flew over to Livermore to spend the night at Jen's parents' house. I love that short flight between Palo Alto and Livermore. Each time we used to fly up to see both her parents and my mother, back when we had the Mooney, Jen would always give me a hard time about wanting to fly between Livermore and Palo Alto. "Why don't we just drive? It's no faster when we fly." Well...because driving is no fun. Even if it doesn't really save any time overall when you fly, I love this little 7-minute flight!