Eagle Lake, Texas

Becca has been working on her instrument license and needs lots of cross-country flying hours -- defined as flying to an airport at least 50 miles from your point of departure. But she doesn't like to do all the flying alone, so she has recruited Jose to share the piloting time. And Jose recruited me as a passenger. So on this beautiful Sunday, we took off towards the tiny town of Eagle Lake, Texas.

Thus far, to go flying with Jose has meant cramming myself into the passenger side of a very tiny Cessna 150, shoulder-to-shoulder. Not much room to stretch out or relax, but it was passable. Today, however, we took one of the Warrior's that the Bay Area Aero Club rents out, and boy was it comfy compared to the Cessna! I had the whole back seat to myself, a cushy seat, and plenty of leg room.

I had a lot of fun just looking out the window and listening to Jose and Becca do their pilot-speak thing. I'm getting better at listening to the radio and understanding the terms, but parts of it still go in one ear and out the other.

As we headed west, we flew right past Twin Lakes. This is a very popular spot with local triathletes since it's the perfect place to get some open water swim practice. It's also popular with scuba divers, since they've got a couple sunken boats and things to explore. I haven't actually ever been there, since it's a good half hour drive or more from Clear Lake, but one day...

Next I saw some cows. The looked like little toys! This made me laugh.

Soon enough, we were approaching Eagle Lake. Becca flew us there and had a very nice landing at the very empty airport.

While searching for a bathroom (which ended up being the bushes behind a hangar, fun), I stopped to read this sign and learned that Eagle Lake is the "Goose Hunting Capital of the World." So if you're into that sort of thing, now you know where to go.

Of course I had to get a photo of my brave and valiant pilots next to their lovely airplane.

The only other planes that were parked on the ramp were these large yellow crop-dusters. Byron later laughed at us for not being up-to-date on our crop-duster knowledge, but come on -- how can I be expected to know that the odd-shaped cockpit is that way because it has a roll cage in case of a crash? Or that crop-dusters crash a lot (a hazard of flying close to the ground). Anyway, Jose liked them a lot, as you can see.

We switched pilots and Jose flew us back over the Texas countryside to Pearland.

I was quite excited by this point because I had now been in a small plane for 3/4 of the trip and had not felt sick at all -- not even once! This is a major accomplishment.

When we got back to the pattern at Pearland, things seemed calm. But then all of a sudden, we noticed 5 Japanese Zeros (or planes dressed up like Japanese Zeros, which is a WWII-era warbird) in formation flying ahead of us! As we paralleled the runway on our downwind leg, the warbirds buzzed straight down the runway.

The warbirds peeled off one by one over the runway to enter the landing pattern behind Jose. However, WWII-era fighters are faster than our little Warrior, and they were gaining on us. As Jose tried to concentrate on landing the plane with 5 Japanese Zeros bearing down on him like some crazy war movie, I craned my neck to see the cool planes. It was like being in a war movie! We were under attack!

Jose had barely cleared the runway when the Zeros came barreling down one by one. It was CRAZY! And AWESOME!

All in all, it was quite the day of flying.