Using a few hours from my very spare freetime, I just did two checkout flights with Andy McMahan at San Carlos Airport to be current again in the Diamond DA-40 and the Cessna 182. We combined some touch and goes at San Carlos Airport with a nice cross country flight to Santa Rosa Airport (up in Napa Valley), had a hamburger there (the famous "$100 hamburger") and had a beautiful flight back at night. Total flight duration was 3 hours. On the way back, we filed an IFR clearance and shooted a practise ILS approach into Oakland. Just can't get enough from the view at Silicon Valley at night from above... too cool :)
Philipp, frontend designer at amiando, arrived in the valley the day after the checkride. Instead of picking him up by car, we agreed to split the costs of picking him up at San Francisco International Airport with the Cessna :) Crazy idea, but big, big fun. Flying into SFO is pretty simple, air traffic control vectors you a bit for sequencing (Boeings and Airbuses coming in all the time, watch out for the wake turbulence) but then usually clears you for visual approach for runway 28R. After that, you taxi to Signature terminal where they'll send a shuttle to the international terminal to pick up your passenger. After arrival of Philipp, we stowed his bagage in the Cessna and headed back to San Carlos Airport (with a short de-route over Golden Gate Bridge). In the end, I spent maybe an hour or two more in comparison to taking the car - but the fun was definately worth it :)
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