Mark Solo

Mark did 30 minutes of solo flight time at Long Beach International Airport on Saturday morning.

He took off from Helistream at John Wayne Airport and flew from there to LGB with Perry, his instructor, in the copter with him. They landed at LGB, where Perry exited the copter, put Mark through some hover exercises and them gave him the signal to "Go!".

The film is a 5 minute clip of one solo pattern around the airport.  The 40 seconds of hovering before he begins forward motion are standard procedure as he calls the tower for clearance to take off.  Once given clearance, he begins to fly forward, low over the ground, and then begins to gain altitude.  For the rest of the flight, he is somewhere within 500 ft.

As he comes back in to land, you can see the small figure of Perry standing to the left of the landing pad.  After setting down, Mark would wait for the thumbs up to pick back up again, where he would call the tower for clearance, and repeat the pattern.

Jake and I were able to watch him in action, from the very comfortable lobby of Airflite Aviation, a private luxury terminal for chartered and personal aircraft (Mark says "fancy jets").  When he had finished 30 straight minutes of solo flight, he picked up Perry and they landed at our terminal, and came inside for cookies, congratulations and hugs.

Jake and I were then given permission to stand outside to watch his final takeoff and swing around the building, and watched as he disappeared into the sky, heading back to John Wayne. With him driving up from John Wayne, and us from Long Beach, we met in the middle at Boudin in South Coast Plaza, for some celebratory sourdough bread and discussion.

His next solo will be 60 minutes, after which he'll be about 7 1/2 hrs away from the minimum to test for his license.  Go Mark!

Day 4 (and 5): Out to Sea

This last post's lateness is the collateral damage associated with the first day of school arriving immediately after the last post combined with the ensuing energy crash of eastward jet lag.

Even so, this is the "late-on-a-Friday-night-when-I-should-be-in-bed" version, so expect inspiration and humorous description to be in short supply.  

This last full day in Polynesian paradise was to be snuba day, and Mark, Jake and I had to set the alarms early, to be downstairs by 6:00am for our pickup.  Snuba was one of the highlights of the previous trip with Jordan, and Jake was very much looking forward to it.  Since Jordan is no fan of sailing, he was opting out, and since Mark and I had had a great day alone with him the day before, it seemed fitting to have this be a special outing with just Jake.

We drove westward around the island by the Disney Aulani resort, surrounded by the expansive Ko'Olani resort, where the catamaran was docked.  Upon check-in we were told that the boat maxes out at 50 guests, but there would be only 15 of us aboard.  Of the other 12 guests, 6 were Japanese (a family of four and a honeymooning couple) and had a Japanese host on board just for them, 2 were a couple from France, and the four other Americans were a couple and a mother & daughter.  The four other English speakers kept very much to themselves, so at times it felt like we had the boat to ourselves and everyone had plenty of space to themselves for lounging or sunbathing.

The weather was perfect, the wind was gentle, and the sea was a shade of sapphire unlike the color of California's Pacific waters.  After the brief orientation when pulling out of dock, we settled onto the pads on the very top, next to the mast, with the sail giving our pale bodies a generous shroud of shade that didn't diminish in the least the subtle elation of feeling the wind in our faces, enjoying the vast expanse of ocean and feeling the rise and fall of the catamaran as we passed over small swells.

For the first hour of sailing, we looked for dolphins and whales, and not seeing any didn't disappoint us at all, since we we do get to see those at home and it was a glorious day on the water, with or without sea mammals.  Mark and Jake were good sports about me having the camera in their faces and even posed a few times.

At the first anchor point, it was our turn for snuba, while everyone else snorkled.  We all suited up and slipped into the water easily.  Unfortunately, the regulator felt very different from the last one and the force with which I had to inhale and exhale made me feel like I was hyperventilating, even though I was perfectly calm.  With Jake and I both going down for short periods and coming back up, our lines got pretty tangled, which had Jake mad at me for the rest of the day as he felt he couldn't just swim freely with my line entwined with his, and me not handling breathing with the regulator well.  Mark, as usual, was off and swimming along the bottom, 20 feet down and having a blast.  Just as I was settling into the regulator and ready to stay under for a while, our guide told us it was time to pull anchor and head to our second spot.  Bummer.

After a brief sail to the next anchor spot, over a living reef, we got in the water again, to snorkle with everyone else this time.

After pulling anchor on the second spot, we settled in to enjoy the sail back to harbor.  On the way, one of the Japanese toddlers got playful with Mark and decided that he wanted a wrestling match, language barrier be darned, and just climbed on and play-punched Mark until he engaged, and got half the boat laughing hysterically in the process.

The danger approaches from behind

The wind was stronger on the sail in and Jake had fun leaning into the wind.

Jake even got to drive the boat when the sails were down..

Overall, Jake felt like this about the day.  We all did.

When we got back to the hotel room, we had planned to take Jake to the USS Missouri, the last major item on his must-do list, but we were pooped with a capital P.  As relaxing as it felt while we were enjoying the sun, wind and water, I could do nothing but shower, change and collapse on the hotel bed.  Thankfully, Jake had a bit more energy and joined Jordan, along with Brad, Nika and the girls playing and swimming down on Waikiki Beach.  Brad and Jordan ventured out further than the others swimming and realized through the miracle of pink girl's swim goggles that what they had thought were rocks, was in fact coral.  It was interesting and fun until an eel popped out of a hole at Jordan and displayed his menacing teeth.  While Jordan got a faceful of eel, Brad found a sea turtle, which was much less alarming.

We once again all mustered for dinner and headed for the Chart House at the marina.  Jan was very pleased with the location and all was well until I started feeling very dizzy and nauseous, probably a side effect of having hyperventilated and spent half the day rocking on a boat, so Mark accompanied me back to the hotel room while the others finished their meals.

I didn't feel well until the next morning, but awakened with Mark in time for sunrise and one last walk alone together.

And then it was time to head to the airport and go home.

Day 3: Living History

The next morning seemed to have equalized our sleep a bit more.  I was finally not feeling desperately sleep-deprived and the boys were sleeping longer than 5:30am.  Mark took advantage of the propensity of the rest of us to move slowly in the morning by getting in good morning workouts.

Jake had to be fed and downstairs by 7:30am to meet the others going to Pearl Harbor that morning (another part of the Jordan Hawaii experience for him).  He went with his Grandad, Uncle Brad & Agathe, who also had never seen the USS Arizona memorial.  I fielded one grumpy phone call from Jake because I'd only made reservations for the Arizona and not for the Missouri, because I'd wanted it to be a half-day excursion for them and not take up an entire day for everyone who went with Jake, and seeing the Missouri meant a shuttle ride from the Pearl Harbor visitor center onto base and out to Ford Island, in addition to the time spent on the boat.  We promised to take him back by ourselves for the USS Missouri the next day.

While the Pearl Harbor group was gone, Mark and I took another walk through Honolulu, down Kalakaua, up to the canal, to secure a rental car for the day.  We had decided to head up to the North Shore, to hopefully see the turtles migrating in, to swim in Waimea Falls, and see what we could along the way to and from.  We knew that Jordan's declared plan for the whole trip was to dig himself a hole in the sand on the beach and not move, so we assumed he wasn't coming along, and we let the others know we had one seat left in the backseat for anyone else who wanted to, as we waited for Jake to get back to join us.

When Jake did get back, he was d-o-n-e with driving for the day and did not want to go, and since Jan had an appointment at the cathedral in the afternoon and no plans to go out and about until the next day, she said he could stay with her.  Jordan surprised us next by bounding out of the bedroom in his swim trunks saying he wanted to go and just needed to run down to a sandal shop and buy some flip flops.

Once the sandal purchase was made, the three of us loaded up in the car and headed out, Mark and I savoring the unexpected pleasure of a day of just the three of us which, with Jordan in his mid-twenties,  no longer living at home, working three jobs and dating seriously, you can imagine doesn't happen very often. 

We hit the road and immediately hit traffic, but with cheerful demeanors and time to spare, we didn't care too much.  It took us a little more than an hour to reach the historic north shore town of Haleiwa and to locate Giovanni's Shrimp Truck within it, tucked down off the road in a shady dirt parking lot with other shrimp trucks and picnic tables.  We each got the #1, a pound of shell-on shrimp scampi with 2 scoops of rice, topped with the scampi garlic mixture.  It was messy eating, but completely worth the drive, and Mark signed our name ("Schmidt" for all of us) on the truck before we left.

After we had our fill of lunch, we turned northbound along the north shore, where it became evident that many others were there to see the turtles also, seriously clogging the tiny 2-lane country road, so we passed through the traffic and proceeded on to Waimea Valley.

Once there, we grabbed our bag full of towels and started out on the .75 mile hike uphill to reach the falls.  It was a hot, muggy day (though I hear we have nothing to complain about considering what the weather was in CA while we were gone), so it was a good thing we were heading towards water.  When Mark was there twenty years ago with Stefan on a buddy spring-break trip, the falls were unattended and peaceful.  Since then, there have been drownings, including a SD Border Patrol agent a few months ago,  so now all swimmers are required to wear life jackets and instructed to stay away from the side walls of the 30-ft deep pond under the falls, with which we duly complied.

Getting into the falls is the hardest part, as the rocks are sharp in the shallow water before it's deep enough to slide off your feet, but once we did, we enjoyed the cool water and the view of the falls from below.  Jordan was unimpressed with the falls, and called it "cute" and declined to be photographed with the required life jacket floating up to his ears, but hung out in the water with us until he was too cold and went back to retrieve the phone so I could attempt to take some pics.  After passing the phone along a human chain from Jordan to Mark to me, we ventured back out towards the falls to calls of "Brave!" at me swimming out with my iPhone.  I offered to take the picture of a father and son from Ohio and send it to them, in hopes they would return the favor.  Alas they did not, so while we have a lovely picture of them, we have only a horrific attempt at a floating selfie by Mark and I.  Try to imagine Mark and I looking happy and serene in the place of their lovely Midwestern faces included below, and we'll all be happier for it.

After deciding we'd left Jordan standing on land watching us canoodle in life jackets long enough, Mark and I headed in to shore and we all started on the hike back down to the valley entrance.  Jordan was just enjoying the walk, and I was blissfully happy taking pictures of trees, until  Mark pointed out how many dead frog carcasses were on the pathway, likely the result of the rather aggressively driven shuttles which zoomed past every few minutes, shuttling the visitors who declined to walk back and forth from the falls.  Thanks, Mark.  

Once back in the car, we zipped just a few yards down the road to Waimea Bay, where there were no parking spots available, no matter how many times we circled, so eventually I just jumped out, determined to stand on the north shore, while the guys circled the lot waiting for me.

We inched our way back down the road to where we would turn inland to head towards the Dole Plantation, determined to grab some pineapple ice cream before calling it a day.  Once clear of the the north shore traffic, it's a quick drive to the plantation and, thankfully, parking is plentiful.  We didn't have time to stay and explore the pineapple fields or maze and still make it back in time for dinner with everyone, so we just gave the main building a once-over, got our pineapple float and two ice cream bowls with crushed pineapple topping and were back off towards town, hoping that the choking Honolulu traffic wouldn't make us late.  We made it back to the hotel in the narrowest nick of time imaginable, flew back up to the suite to fling off our bathing suits and throw on dry clothes in time to meet everyone in the lobby where we divided into a taxi group and a walking group.  

Rewinding a bit, while Mark, Jordan and I were enjoying the north shore, Brad, Nika and the girls took an eco walking tour of Oahu.  They saw ruins, the royal burial grounds, some glorious viewpoints and got a mini-education in homeopathic plant-based remedies that their tour guide and his physician friend have spent the last 30 years studying in Hawaii, which were nicely compiled into a thick booklet they came away with to bring home.  Who knew that a citrus juice soak cures athlete's foot?

Dinner that night was at Duke's, and it was fabulous.  The Hawaiian trio serenaded Mark Sr. & Jan for their 45th anniversary, and the other large group in the restaurant sounded off with not only the USC alma mater, but also a rousing So Cal Spellout.  Mark and I snuck off for another beach moment alone, and everyone traded stories of how we'd spent our day.  Day 3 in the books.