Up In The Air

Somehow Amanda and I have spent a day and a half in the Bay Area without seeing the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Warf--any of it. But we did get a view of the Bay Area that almost no one else experiences.

A good friend of Pens', Dan, learned how to fly small planes, just for fun, and his training base is the Palo Alto airfield. It's a tiny strip of land sandwiched between San Francisco Bay and a whole lot of golf courses. He took us up in a Cessna Skyhawk that's no bigger than a car (I thought often of Harry Potter's flying car and that tree they landed in...).

(Yes, Amanda's wearing aviator sunglasses)

For about an hour we flew over Stanford U. (it's amazing how many people in Palo Alto have their own tennis courts, next to their own swimming pools), north over the 101 to San Francisco, then circled over the city, lower and lower, until it seemed like we could easily land on a skyscraper.

Then we flew over the Bay Bridge to Oakland and back across the bay to Palo Alto, landing again on that narrow strip of land, safe and sound.

Check out this photo from above the City by the Bay: I used to think Coit Tower was a great vantage point to see San Fran. Then I got that vantage point on Coit Tower.

We also took video and audio but are having trouble uploading...there may be an update tomorrow...