Editor”s note: This is a first-person account of reporter Tiffany Revelle”s experience flying over Lake County in a Cherokee Piper on Saturday.
LAKE COUNTY ? Until Saturday, I had never seen Lake County from 5,000 feet in the air. Nor had I ever realized how many vineyards it has.
I went up for the first time in a small aircraft with new pilot Aneesh Mullachery, a Solo Flight School student who just got his private pilot license last week. He piloted the Cherokee Piper, a closed-cockpit, single-engine craft, over the county”s rolling vineyards, hills, lakes and towns while I marveled at the view and tried to remember to snap pictures.
“Lake County is a very beautiful place,” Mullachery said. It was an understatement. Until you have seen Lake County from the window ? or open cockpit ? of a small craft, you haven”t seen it. It was like looking at a living, moving map.
I strapped in and donned the communication headset and the trip down the runway began. As the plane picked up speed, I realized this was very different from ascending in a commercial craft. I could feel the wheels leave the tarmac underneath my seat.
I watched Mullachery manipulate the airplane”s many controls, switches and knobs, mostly paying attention to his demeanor and the expression on his face. What I saw there was that this was just another routine take-off, like a trip to the grocery store.
I looked out the window, and the first thing that struck me as we rose was how the horizon seemed to flatten and spread out. One minute I was seeing the trees and buildings as objects that rise into the air, and the next minute I was seeing them as part of a hodge-podge of color and shape on a vast piece of three-dimensional artwork.
I looked down at the shoreline of Clear Lake and wondered what all those tiny lines were jutting out into the water, and then realized they were boat docks. Cars were inscrutable, shiny dots moving on the roadways and littering parking lots. Buildings were hard to identify, and I never found my house, the courthouse or the Record-Bee building. Baseball fields were the easiest things to identify, which helped me finger parks and schools.
It was easy to see where Highway 29 cut a path from one end of the county to another, traversing patchwork fields between clusters of buildings that marked cities and towns. We must have flown around Mount Konocti at least twice as we soared over Clear Lake south of Kelseyville and then wound toward the Northshore. I had seen the breathtaking view from atop the mountain, and now found myself awed at the breathtaking view from above the mountain.
I see why people pay top dollar for this experience. It”s all a matter of perspective, as the saying goes.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com, or call her directly
