3 Sunny Birthday Flights

JasonApril 21, 2015May 3, 2017 Flights

To celebrate my birthday (4/18), I decided to do a flight each day of the weekend. Friday, hitting up downtown Portland and the Gorge. Saturday, heading to Tillamook for lunch, cheese, and jumping in the ocean. With a final flight around Mt. Hood with a great finish through the Gorge on Sunday. The weather this weekend was was prime for some excellent flying. I flew nine people who have never flown with me before and gained 4.2 hours of pilot in command time. Overall, a major success!

Downtown Portland and Multnomah Falls with John, Tori, and Brant

I was living with Brant back in 2010 when I was looking for places to start my training to become a pilot, so it was fitting that I finally get him in the air. John and Tori had shared their interest with me to go flying, so when our schedules aligned, a flight was all that was next.

We left Troutdale airport in N5201H around 6:30pm and made our way to downtown Portland. We started off the flight making our way above Oregon City to see the river falls near the dam. Always a pretty site when in the air or on the ground. From there we made our way north into Portland where we did a fly over loop around downtown around 2,000 feet. The bridges in Portland stand out so much more when in the air. Such a great picture. We had some more time before landing back into Troutdale, so we made our way east into the Columbia River Gorge where we made our way around 1,500 feet to see Multnomah Falls. I made a 180 degree turn after the falls and my crew got some good views of the falls along with the steam boat that was right below us. After this we made our way back past Crown Point before making our way into Troutdale just after 7:30pm.

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Tillamook Adventure with Reky and my roommates (Lewis and Annamarie)

I’ve been meaning to fly Lewis and Ann since I finished up my license as I had given them a flight for their wedding in February of 2014. However, we’ve been unsuccessful with coordinating time with our busy lives to make it happen. Thankfully however, they were more than welcome to be available on my birthday for me to take them flying. Reky is sadly moving away shortly for some long term traveling, so I was glad to get her on a flight before she left town. We took off around 11:30am from Troutdale and made our way flying over Portland and the hills to Tillamook. The flight was lovely with so much in view. Lewis sat in front on the way there.

We landed at Tillamook and after grabbed our gear. We went inside and met with Warren who runs the Tillamook FBO. This is the first place I’ve flown into where they have a courtesy car to be used by pilots who want to get away from the air strip and it’s free to use! We took off north after getting a recommendation from him to go to Pacific Oyster for lunch in Bay City. Glad we listened, cause the food was very good. Fresh fish and chips along with plenty of oysters made this lunch quite the treat. Following this we drove around the ocean side a bit enjoying the sun before making our way to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for a quick tour, cheese samplings, and tasty ice cream! Love that place.

We wanted to get onto a beach before flying back, so we went west towards the bay where we found a nice spot of beach. Reky kept giving me a hard time about being chicken of not going in the ocean. Well, I decided to throw on my trunks and after Reky got ready, we ran into the water and submerged ourselves. Now for those who don’t know, the Oregon coast has very very very cold water. We came out shivering, but it was such a refreshing chill after being in the sun all day.

We cleaned up, got into the car, and made our way back to the airport where we left the car with Warren and made our way back to Troutdale for a smooth landing and a trip back to Portland. An amazing way to spend my actual birthday and I get to try out that useful outdoor equipment I got last year as a gift.

Mt. Hood with Lila, Paige, and Jeff

I had been trying to setup a flight with Lila for a while, and when I had been planning to fly Paige and Jeff who were visiting from Oakland for the weekend, it just worked out that she was also able to join in on the fun. We decided to go to mountains and I chose Mt. Hood. We flew south from Troutdale just after 3pm and started our climb as we made our way to the peak of the mountain. We reached the mountain around 9,500 feet and still had more to go so I made a wide rotation around the mountain climbing to 11,500 feet just peaking over Mt. Hood. On our way around we saw another plane doing something similar but flying a lot closer to it which looked awesome though I’m pretty sure was breaking some rules…oh well.

We left the area making a decent towards the Columbia River Gorge where Lila got to take the controls a bit and fly us in the direction West when we got to the river. I took us down to around 2,000 feet and we flew over the Bonneville Dam, and we then passed Multnomah Falls, and Crown Point before touching down just over an hour later at Troutdale.

What an amazing birthday weekend. So glad to have been able to share the joy of flying with all those who went with me and can’t wait to do it again. I’m off to New Orleans next weekend for Jazz Fest so no flying for me for a couple weeks, then I’ll be back to taking people up once again.