Ok, it wasn't really a thousand dollar sandwich but it was one of the most expensive lunches I ever had. And it was not because of my choice of food. Turns out the method of transportation had a lot to do with it. Let me explain...
A British friend surprised me with a visit to San Francisco earlier this month for a romantic getaway. Since he is an experienced pilot, I agreed to fly with him on a spectacular tour of the northern California coast, followed by an afternoon snack at Pebble Beach. On what promised to be an exceptionally clear morning, we boarded a Columbia 400, a sleek, light and fast small aircraft waiting for us at the Gnoss Field airport in Novato, about 45 minutes north of San Francisco. I sat on the co-pilot's seat, placed Bose's noise-canceling aviation headset over my ears and buckled-up as we performed a last minute aircraft check. Believe it or not, for once, I was actually doing what I was told :)
The cockpit looked an awful lot like Microsoft's Flight Simulator game. In fact, most of the instruments were entirely digital and the readings, including gyroscope, map and GPS data, appeared on liquid crystal displays. Weather data were also automatically downloaded through a satellite link.
We took off and headed west, towards Point Reyes where we were treated to a panoramic view of the Pacific coast line. We flew over the St Andreas fault, responsible for the devastating 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, before heading south towards the Golden Gate Bridge (photo). After receiving permission from the SFO air traffic control, we decreased our altitude, circled over Alcatraz (photo), and flew over the Bay Bridge. It was fascinating to see the construction progress on the new span of the bridge connecting Oakland to Yerba Buena. The critics were right btw, it looks quite ugly, especially from the sky...
We continued south over the city and crossed over the hills towards California’s scenic Highway 1 on our way to the Monterey peninsula. We flew past Carmel along the magnificent Big Sur coastline where we observed several elephant seals lounging on rocks. I hope we didn’t disturb them :) They looked fairly young and small in size. This made sense since they are usually the first to come to shore around this time of year. After encountering some fog, we turned back, flew over Post Ranch Inn ("America's most romantic resort" that I've yet to visit!) and landed safely at the Monterey airport. The runway was quite large since Monterey is also serviced by commercial flights.
We refueled at Monterey's Million Air FBO, a beautiful and well-run facility servicing private jets and aircraft. The facility, part of a network of 28 franchises, looked much like an upscale hotel lobby and was even equipped with Wi-Fi for free internet access. A friendly receptionist, who recognized my friend from a previous flight on a much larger Citation jet, arranged for a complimentary "crew" car, a Jaguar sitting on the parking lot.
After some sightseeing along the famous 17 mile drive, we headed to the Lodge at Pebble Beach. We had a nice lunch at Stillwater Bar & Grill while enjoying the beautiful view of the golf course and the ocean (photo). Fortunately, I remembered to snap a couple of pictures for the blog!
A few hours later we took off again and enjoyed an unforgettable sunset over the Pacific with some scattered clouds on the horizon. Unfortunately I did not observe a green flash :(
Making one last tour of the San Francisco skyline, this time by night, we flew over the 997 ft Sutro Tower, and the pyramid-shaped Transamerica building, before landing at San Carlos airport, a short distance to the south. Finally, a limo took us to the Ritz in Half Moon Bay for a slightly different kind of relaxation and pleasure ;)
Jet Set Lara, exploring the Science of Pleasure ;)
Watch the 10 second video I took with my Treo over Big Sur:
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