A day off (in the air!)

Exciting news: I finally got a day off! This was my first day off since starting my OB rotation 2 weeks ago and will have to "last" me until next Saturday (It has been close to 170 hours over 2 weeks). I had strongly contemplated being a total vegetable and sleeping the day away, as gosh knows I needed to catch up (I still felt sleep deprived, despite practically staggering into my bed around 8:30 or 9 p.m. every night recently); however, I had good adventurous people convincing me otherwise!

I got together last night at Zocalos for margaritas and comida Mexicana with Kate, Kyla, Ben, and Amy, which was good times. Despite being somewhat zombie-like, I did enjoy feeling like a *real* person getting out of scrubs and getting to enjoy life OUTSIDE the hospital :)

Anyway, today was another whole adventure. Mike, a friend that I'd met at Erin and TJ's wedding and with who we also hiked Half-Dome, drove out here from Redwood City to take a little (well, BIG) adventure. He was very vague about the plans for the day, but somehow directed the car to the Sacramento Executive Airport, which, as you can imagine, really had me wondering.

What did we do for the day? Toured the NorCal/Bay area..... VIA PLANE (which you can see in the first pic above)!!!! How crazy is this? I was excited to get to know the area better (he advertises being a great tour guide, which was definitely true!), but didn't expect to be doing from an aerial standpoint :) A friend of a friend of his works for this flight school and has this Cessna that we took up! I have to say, this was one of the coolest things I've gotten to do ever, much less in the past several months when residency has seemingly sucked away my previous semi-adventurous spirit. Hope you enjoy these shots as much as I enjoyed seeing them from above! :)

This is Mike, our plane, and Jon (our "auto" pilot) in the background

I'm really going up in this thing??! :)
The controls (Jon let me steer a little bit -- I realize that it is a very scary thought to contemplate letting such a klutzy girl do such a thing) :)Jon, the *real* pilot (with a license) :)
Sac-town from the sky

The farmland just outside Sac (don't worry, Dad, no flooding yet :))

We even flew over the Dixon Corn Maze that I'd maneuvered with Alex a mere two weeks ago!

Here is an aerial view of Lake Berryessa, to which I'd driven back in August

We flew over Napa and Sonoma valleys and saw the vineyards, and then all the way to the California coastline! It was so neat to see Point Reyes National Seashore, esp. with Mike's commentary of all the towns and sights below).

Can you see the lighthouse??

Straight down!

Then it was all the way to over San Francisco! We saw the skyline, then curved around the bay.

Alcatraz!!!!

And the Golden Gate Bridge!!!!!

WOW!!!!!! Oh, how I <3 (*heart*) California...
Thanks, Mike, for such a fun day!!!!