Good thing I did my hair

My mom is so cool. Not that we need more evidence of this fact, but as a Christmas present for my dad this past December, she bought him a gift certificate for a ride in a bi-plane over St. Petersburg and the surrounding beaches. Suh-weet! And even better is that Dad got to take two people with him for free, so guess who got to cheat death yesterday with him?! Oh yeah! Me and my brother Chris. We headed out to the Clearwater Municipal Airport after lunch, which was perfect because Chris just got off his shift at All Children's Hospital that is just down the street. It was so meant to be! After going directly to "Hangar 7" and hanging out in what were probably many very restricted areas, we finally were able to call the owner and confirm that we were in the wrong place and needed to go to the actual "terminal" like a normal human being should. D'oh!

Our first hint that we were not actually in the right spot should have been when we watched the red bi-plane taxi away from us and then take off and land no where near where we were. Wait, come baaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!


Okay, we found the terminal and the owner and the pilot, so we were now on track for our ride.


Hanging out while everyone got ready...

As Chris and I are the BIGGEST motion sickness pansies on the planet, he did wear his waterproof shoes, just in case of an emergency.



Sorry Dad, I know you won't think this picture is flattering, but I was simply showing the tiny door we all had to climb through. Way to take one for the team!

(seriously, there were so many captions I could have put on this....)


Okay, in the plane and we have our noise protecting headgear. Roll call time!

Chris, you ready??

CHECK!


Dad?


CHECK!


Me?

WHAT THE HECK?

So we took off and had a very cool ride on our Island tour. It wasn't actually very scary, it took only a few moments to get used to it, but the plane was not as sturdy as you are used to when flying Delta or the like. But we had total trust in our guide. I mean, Jesus is his co-pilot, just check out the hat.


He even offered to take a picture of all of us enjoying the trip...


HANDS ON THE WHEEL!! OH MY GOSH, JUST FLY THE PLANE!!! Well, that is what we were kind of thinking. But it is a great picture :)


So here are a few action shots of what we saw from the air:

view of the airport behind us. You can see the Tropicana field dome in the distance...


Even being so close to the ocean, look at all those trees!!!


Tierra Verde


Ft. DeSoto- the only beach I ever really go to :)


Sunshine Skyway Bridge (and a great place for an emergency water landing, I thought...)



Sweet coastline shot

I did take some video, which is mostly for my mom to live vicariously through. This is very raw video- no editing or anything. You are hearing what we were hearing :)
You will also see us going in for our first landing, but suddenly we have to abort because another plane is in the way somewhere. (I never saw it) So we got an extra turn around the bay to come in safely the second time.







To be honest, the motion sickness wasn't so bad. If I were up there about another 10 minutes things might have gone differently, but it turned out to be the perfect trip. Thanks Mom! Thanks Dad! Thanks Wright Brothers! It was one for the ages :)