Gone with the Wind… Literally

Last year K got me a gift certificate for an hour of Flying at the GoodFlying Club in San Jose, Reid Hillview Airport. Typical of me, I kept procastinating the appointment and after almost a year (not to mention that K was gonna kill me if I delayed it any longer), I fixed up an appointment and took K along to go flying.
The instructor was a nice young lady with loads of patience for my ignorance and dumb questions. She took the better part of an hour to explain each part of the plane and also went through each of the long list of meters (for want of a better word) in the cockpit. We were gonna fly in a Cessna 172, a four seater, four-cylinder 192HP plane. Its a small, light plane and hence very popular with private fliers. Its also quite cheap. A used C172 can be found for $50K-$70K, the price of a beamer. So finally we fuelled the plane and got going on our way to fly from San Jose westward towards the coast by Santa Cruz, over the Santa Cruz Mountains. The instructor and I were in the front seats, and K was in the back, faithfully clicking away a million pictures.
After getting the go-ahead from the tower, the instructor did the takeoff and basically got us up to about 1500 ft. I felt like I was going on a roller-coaster ride, a bit of butterflies in my stomach. Once we were over Gilroy, she let me take over the controls. We flew straight for a couple of mins and then made a wide right to start towards Santa Cruz. The view from above was complete amazing. There was a bit of turbulence when going over the mountains, so I took the plane upto about 4500 ft and flew straight towards the Santa Cruz beach, that I could see in the distance. It was a very sunny and nice day and we had a good view of everything. Once we reached Capitola beach, we made a right again and flew along the coast up to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Another right took us up to UCSC, and allow me to say this again, it was a fabulous sight looking down at UCSC from 4500 ft. Then we made a wide u-turn on the left and traced our way back over the mountains to San Jose. The instructor took over the controls again when we had to land, but otherwise she was a wonderful laid-back person who let me handle it.

The butterflies only came during take-off and landing, otherwise its almost like you are in a sluggish car. You never feel the speed of the plane. Its almost like you are static in mid-air, since your frame-of-reference does not move as rapidly as it does in a car. On the whole it was a wonderful experience. Most importantly, thanks to K for a great B’day gift.