Saturday 21st, I ran the Turkey Trot’09 (10K) in Davis. It was fun as usual and a somewhat easy 10K.  However the weather was not so great: foggy, wet, slippery and cold. But what a great crowd to cheers us up! I just love Davis and I will miss it very much. This year I ran it in 43 minutes, beating my last year time of 48 minutes. I’m happy with that!….do you like my hair?

Since I have some time-off for the next few weeks before staring my new exiting job, I took advantage of today’s great weather to spend some time flying around, just for the heck of flying. I took off KEDU (UC Davis airport called University airport) using runway 17 then I made a 90 right-turn to the west and climb to 4500ft.

The climb to cruising altitude was really smooth, thanks to the temperature inversion. However the downside of a temperature inversion is bad to poor visibility of such air masses. After few minutes I was overflying Winters and decided to head north for a little while. No other aircrafts were around me and the radio was quiet. Perfect!

After some time, I headed back to Davis and started my descent while turning over Winters. I overflew KEDU at 1600ft then descended a bit to 1400ft to stay underneath SMF airspace. After few moments of flying south Davis, I overflew the city to take some photos of downtown Davis. Not easy to fly with one hand and take pictures with the other.

As usual I had a great time. I can’t get enough of that!

Happy 4th of july! This year we kinda missed the first minutes of the fireworks. We sat in our comfy folding chairs to enjoy the rest of the show though. It was nice, but I have the feeling it was shorter than the previous years…Are fireworks another victims of the crappy economy?

The battery of our fancy HDD camcorder ran out of juice in the middle of the show….here the grand finale shot with my iPhone. Not too shabby isn’t?

I love chasing the sunset with my Langster. Yesterday my buddy (Langster) and I went to the end of the runway 16 (Davis University airport) to catch one of the greatest sunset i’ve seen in weeks . I can’t get tired of the awesomeness of the sunsets in California. The end of the runway 16 is my favorite spot in Davis to find peacefulness and to regenerate after a long day at work. It is a quick and highly rewarding trip either by bike or running.

Heavy C-172…

Saturday June 6th, we had the annual spot landing and flour bombing contest at the University airport in Davis (KEDU). It was a lot of fun! This year I flew the C152 N24774 with Jackie as a bomber. Masayo was on the ground filming everything. The flour bombing rules are simple: be the closest to the target (a white circle of ~10 meters in diameter) drawn right in the middle of the runway/taxiway, fly no lower than 600ft, no slower than 80Kts (~92MPH). For the landing contest the rules are also simple : land the closest to a specific mark. To make it more difficult it has to be done without power meaning that while midfield parallel to the runway at 900ft the power has be set to idle and then glide to the mark with two 90 degrees left turn and no slip for landing. That’s tricky and a lot of fun to do.

We didn’t do well on the bombing, but oh well! who cares? We had a lot of fun flying this day. Then, after a quick BBQ, Masayo Jackie and I went for a flight above the Lake Berryessa with the C172 N4634D. We climbed to 6500ft to fully enjoy the scenery. The view was stunning up-there… and we were flying among clouds: priceless!  What a great day of flying.

Wind, rain, cold, and wet, slippery: I felt almost sorry for the guys biking at 30 mph with this bad weather. However, it is kind of cool having the start of the tour of California in Davis. So we hang out a little, outside Wheelworks downtown to see the guys warming up and racing a couple of laps around the blocks. Well, those guys are dam fast with their top-notch bikes: impressive!

My bike, Bullitt, doesn’t like having wet tires…. too bad, I’m sure she would have love racing a little with those rookies, especially with Lance A.

Davis is definitively a quiet college town with no much going on but I like it very much and I will definitively miss it when I will have to leave. I love Davis for many things: the bike lanes everywhere, the feeling to live in a small village even though Davis is not that small. I like also running west Davis around the fields, the airport. It’s only a few blocks away from my house and it is just great for an easy run.

It was this last sunday (11/23/08), a nice afternoon for a sweet flight to the San-Francisco bay with Miriam and Frank. Masayo was there to take great shots of the take-off.

11/23/08 C-172 N711PG Take off runway 34

It was on March 15th ’08. Nice clouds over Davis.

Saturday (22Nov) I ran the 10K Turkey Trot in Davis along with friends Frank, Miriam and Milena. Masayo didn’t run but she was there to take photos and cheers us up. I was a fun 10Km run despite the very thick fog and the cold. The weather is always great in Davis…but this saturday morning, it was not too great..oh well ! I ran the all thing in 48m 39s  I’m happy with that, and we all did it under 1hour. To celebrate the run, we all went to Cattlemen’s for dinner. I had a gigantic steak (2lbs) called “The Sheriff”…yummy !

A nice and easy bike ride between Davis and Winters. It’s definitively one of my favorite local bike ride with zero difficulties, little traffic most of the time and a nice scenic view. With a grand total of only 42Km, the round trip Davis<->Winters can be done in 2H with a comfy coffee break at the Steady Eddy’s Coffee House in winters. I like to ride my bike “Bullitt” on those country side roads. Bullitt is fast as hell. She’ll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I’ve made a lot of special modifications myself. Oh yeah !