San Francisco Trip

I flew to San Francisco on Sunday for a trade show last Sunday. I wrote up a nice long blog entry, and as I went to type my last sentence, the web browser crashed. Dangit! So, this blog entry is basically a rehash of my previous blog entry. You really should’ve read the other entry. Shew! It was a good one! I laughed, I cried….I was truly moved. And that was even after the web browser crashed. Okay, on to the story…

I woke up early, early on Sunday morning and drove through the biting cold (1°F) to the Canton Akron Regional Airport. I decided to fly Frontier Airlines, mostly because they don’t connect through Chicago for westbound routes. Plus, they have this sweet moving map/GPS display that gets me all geeked out. I love knowing exactly where I am (in between advertisements for the $8 pay-per-view movies). Frontier also offers 24 channels of DirecTV, but since I’m one of those crazy people that can stare at a G1000 simulator all afternoon, virtually flying around the country, I kept my $5 nice and safe in my pocket, and watched the free moving map perched by my window seat at Flight Level 380.

We took off from CAK, and flew at 250kts at about 9000ft for about 40-50nm, until we hit Mansfield and then started the climb up towards our cruise altitude. I suppose that this departure pattern has something to do with the traffic patterns into Cleveland. I’ll have to check the TAC for what the approach and departure patterns are for Cleveland, but it’ll make me think twice about flying at 10,000ft around Mansfield. I’m glad that those guys fly with TCAS. It was a nice smooth flight from CAK with clouds obscuring the ground until we started our descent into Denver. Landing was nice and smooth, and I walked from my arriving flight directly onto the flight bound to San Francisco. Not much of a layover – maybe 20 minutes…

On our departure out of Denver, the pilot almost stood the A319 on its tail as we tried to gain as much altitude as possible before the mountains. If you’ll take a look at the picture I took of downtown Denver, we had gained about 7000ft AGL by the time we hit downtown. AWESOME! We had only been flying for what like 3 minutes or something. This bird was rocketing up into the sky. The captain kept relaying warnings of moderate turbulence ahead over the mountains, but we didn’t get anything. After a short period of clear skies over the Front Range, there were thick clouds over most of Colorado and Utah, finally clearing up near the Nevada/California border.

I took this picture of the Sierras, just as we were crossing over the California border. It was like watching a sheer mountainous wall rise up out of the desert as we flew toward California. I remember how dramatic the mountains were from the ground as I drove up that valley about 10 years ago. You usually expect mountains from the air to flatten out a little, but the Sierras were still very impressive from 35,000ft.

We started to make our descent into San Francisco, and on the final approach into SFO, I saw an Asiana 777 peeking in and out of the clouds, lined up on a parallel runway. Eventually, it came closer and closer until it was only about 1500ft off our wingtip or so, and then they dropped their landing gear and hung well back of our position for a staggered arrival.

It was quite a shock landing in SFO with the temperature hovering around 60-65°F. After my 45 minute ride in the stuffy unventilated BART train from the airport and lugging my suitcase all over the streets, I was burning up! First thing that I did upon arrival was to turn the A/C in my hotel room on full blast. Sit in the cool air stream for 25 minutes, dunk my head in some ice water, and then I grabbed my camera and met up with my parents to go find some lunch. We rode the Cable Car (personal first!) from Powell & Market Street over to Fisherman’s Wharf, where we ate lunch at IN-N-OUT burger. MMmmmm….a Double-Double hamburger animal style. Does it get any better? I think not.

After wandering around Fisherman’s Wharf for a while, we took a Crazy Taxi ride to the Legion of Honor museum in Lincoln Park. Get this – The taxicab driver DIDN’T know where Lincoln Park was! He’d only been a taxi driver for 7-8 years…talk about a lack of situational awareness! Not going to share a cockpit with that space cadet if I can help it! Not only is the Legion of Honor museum in a very beautiful part of San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, but it is an impressive building as well. They have a really nice exhibit of Rodin sculptures, and some good examples of the Dutch masters. It was well worth the time.

"I wonder if I should go with a DA40 or a SR22? Hmmmm...."

After bumming around the Legion of Honor museum, we hopped another cab to Golden Gate Park to visit the Conservatory of Flowers. This time the cab driver knew where the heck he was going, and we had a nice time wandering aamonst the flowers. However, I think San Francisco has nothing on the Franklin Conservatory in good ol’ Columbus, Ohio. Take that, west coast weenies!