Earning my Pilot's License: Part II: The Time Machine

                                 My destination: Trinity Center Airport along Trinity Lake

                                 with the Trinity Alps in the background

My pilot's logbook records my second flight with my instructor on May 27th, 3 days after my maiden flight on my birthday (see my blog for November 19, 2009). Before pre-flighting Cherokee N33570, the other trainer in Chico Aviation's fleet of planes, he tells me we are doing a dual cross country to Trinity Center Airport in the beautiful Shasta/Trinity Wilderness Area in far Northern California.

I quickly learned what a time machine even my entry level trainer could be!

I made a half dozen car trips to Trinity County either to do business in Weaverville or in passing through on Route 299 on my way to Eureka and Arcata along the California coast. I had also been to Coffee Creek to visit Michael and Cora Sue Swords, who ran a Trinity Alps Camping business that employed mules for packing in. Each trip from Chico to Weaverville (about 18 miles south of our airport destination) took me no less than two and a half hours. My logbook records total time for the air trip is 2 hours.

We did one touch and go at the airport and then returned to Chico airport. Timed saved each way was an hour and a half or a total of three hours for the round trip. In addition, I had the opportunity to get a bird's eye view of scenic rugged Northern California landmarks: Mount Shasta, the Trinity River, the Siskiyou Mountains into Oregon, etc.

Hail to my newly discovered time machine. This discovery would come in handy less than 2 years later when I would fly my own time machine, Cherokee N1029h, a Piper Archer II.

By the way, the British author James Hilton claimed that visiting Weaverville had inspired the remote Eden of Shangri-la in his novel Lost Horizon.

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