Earlier today I took the Cessna up for a solo scenic flight to Cascade Locks and the Bonneville Dam. I departed the airport and almost immediately encountered heavy crosswinds and thermals. The ride was bumpy until I reached my cruising altitude of 6500 feet. After that, it was smooth sailing on a beautiful day with perfect visibility. The sun was low (2 hours from sunset) so all of the valleys and terrain features were nicely lit with deep shadows. Cruising above the timberline while listening to Sabaton and taking in an amazing vista: life is good.

I snapped a few iPhone photos along the way:

So, I was adventurous and tried a new dish at our local Mexican restaurant. It was called a Mojarra Frita and was described as a fish recipe garnished with lettuce, tomato and pico de gallo. Sounds delicious, right? Well, maybe not…

Before the waitress could put the dish down on the table, Siena start exclaiming “fish, fish, fish!”. Yep, she recognized that her Daddy had, in fact, ordered a fish (quite literally). At least it wasn’t a total loss: the rice and beans were good.

It’s official, I’m a private pilot. Exactly one year from the day of my first flight, I took and passed my checkride. I arrived at the airfield at 8AM and proceeded to endure a seven hour test that I can only describe as brutal. The checkride consisted of an oral exam on the ground covering all areas of aviation knowledge and concluded with a few hours in the air including navigation and demonstrating maneuvers. After the ordeal I was exhausted, but pleased that I completed my goal.

My first passenger was my beautiful wife. For her birthday, we took a scenic flight around the local valleys and she captured some of it on her cell phone camera:

Here are some shots from my solo cross country flight to Madras, one of the requirements I had to complete to earn my private pilot certificate:

Flying is always exciting, especially when a huge forest fire has the next valley over ablaze and a TFR (temporary flight restriction) is placed directly above your home airport.

LRH and I attended a photography workshop in Portland focusing on using wireless flash for creative lighting. We had a fun and learned a ton. Here are some results.

Pajamas Media has a story about two rallies that occured on the same day – one in Nevada and one in Californicate. The difference between the two, as expected, is striking. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

One difference that wasn’t highlighted, however, is the fact that the women at the conservative rally were very attractive. Interesting. LOL!

Today, a friend of mine sent me this:

So, I guess the case is closed.

Seriously, photographers have a great deal of power. Consider that all of the pictures of the “ugly” Democrat women are just plain bad photographs. Anyone can end up a victim of bad timing, as John McCain learned during the 2008 presidential debates. This is why I prefer to be on the viewfinder side of the camera ;)

It’s that time of year again. This one’s for the ecofascists… :D

Previous Earth Days: 2009, 2008, 2007

I had another adventurous weekend, starting with my flight to Goldendale Saturday morning. I was at the airfield by 10AM for preflight and departed by 10:45 with the intention of beating the gusty winds that were forecast for the afternoon. I made it out to Goldendale and was busy practicing some ground reference maneuvers when the Gorge winds finally started to kick up. The flight home was bumpy, to say the least, and it culminated in my first solo crosswind landing with 16 knot gusts.

Sunday, LRH and I decided to take our little Fuss Nugget to Catherine Creek since the wildflowers are in full bloom. This is a incredible place for photography and portraits. The park itself is set on a plateau overlooking the Columbia River with a paved trail that forms a one mile loop. Siena had a blast with the wildflowers and foot bridges. She would excitedly proclaim “weeee!” whenever an airplane flew by, which happened several times since the Columbia River is a highway for air traffic. In fact, I had flown over this park the day before.

We arrived just a few hours before sunset, so the light was soft and filtered. Here are a few landscape shots I came up with.

IE is the work of Beelzebub. No support for semi-transparent PNGs. Not standards compliant. Bugged. Slow. Ugh… This browser is an epic pile of suck. Please download Firefox or Opera if you use Windows.

W3 keeps track of browser statistics at this site: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp According to the data, IE accounts for 35.3% of browsers on the web. In fact, IE6, the bane of all web developers has almost 10% of the browser market. WTF?! Are these people too lazy to go to Mozilla and click download? I just don’t understand.

::rant off::

Siena took out all her books, placed them in a pile and spent over a half hour reading them. Apparently I did this all the time when I was a kid.

This last weekend was interesting, to say the least. I originally planned a two hour solo flight for Saturday – a quick trip to Goldendale for some practice landings on their narrow strip and maybe some VOR tracking en route. However, upon arriving at the airport, they asked me to grab my camera and instead photograph the new addition to the FBO’s flight school, a beautiful Cessna 182: N34SR. I returned home in a hurry, ignoring Siena’s enthusiastic “Daddy!!!” as I walked in the door and grabbed my Nikon D700 with portrait lens and my Canon Digital Rebel with a 300mm zoom. Batteries? Check. Memory Cards? Check. Memory Cards and Batteries installed in camera? Check! After that it was back to the airport.

We departed as a flight of two and flew formation across the Cascades, passing Mt. Hood, Mt. Saint Helens and Mt. Adams for a total of one hour. I sat in the left seat of the lead plane (a Cessna 172) and shot N34SR while my flight instructor had the controls. The windows of the Cessna open to the outside and when released will swing all the way open and stay there due to the force of the slipstream, making this particular airplane ideal for aerial photography. With one hand on the shutter button and one on the comm I verbally guided N34SR in the frame of my camera and shot away. The FBO needed photos of their new airplane to promote their scenic flights and flight school – I’m hoping they’ll be happily impressed with these:

After returning from the air-to-air shoot, I took the Cessna up for a solo flight around Mt. Hood. Pleasant, calm and uneventful described my one hour flight, that is, until I decided to land. I was at 3000 feet MSL, inbound for a 45 degree entry to the left downwind leg of the pattern for runway 25 when I noticed a shiny metallic object in an ascending trajectory directly in front of me. At first I thought it was a helicopter that had just departed from the airport, but I didn’t hear any radio calls announcing the departure prior to seeing this thing. As I approached it, I couldn’t see wings or rotors so it definitely wasn’t a manned craft. The sun was glinting off its metallic surface, which further obscured it from view. I immediately rolled to the left and the object passed by me. Whatever it was, it was fast, circular and almost hit me. I have a feeling that it was a large balloon of some kind – definitely not a party balloon. Either way, I couldn’t identify this flying object, so I can safely say that I’ve seen my first UFO.

While I was flying, one of my coworkers was entertaining guests at her housewarming party. They have a beautiful custom home right next to the runway, so I landed in front of my entire company, their spouses and significants others, and a bunch of people I didn’t know. Of course my landing was graded, as everyone knew I was the pilot of the Cessna that just touched down. I made the mistake of grabbing a beer before telling people about the UFO I spotted above the valley. After one glance at my drink, the conversation quickly transitioned into, “So, you fly drunk, huh?” or “How many beers is this for you tonight?”. Hey, at least I wasn’t trying to convince them it was a spaceship!

While my Saturday was fun, my Sunday was miserable, for myself, my wife and nugget. We all came down with the stomach flu, putting an abrupt end to our plans for post processing the pictures from the air-to-air shoot. I had forgotten what stomach flu was like, having last experienced it in Venice ten years ago. It was intense but fortunately short lived. I am finally starting to feel better and can’t wait to get up there again, maybe with a tin foil hat this time.