Father’s Day 2011 was marked by nearly unflyable weather, with low 2200-foot ceilings and unstable air. I had never taken my Dad flying before so wanted to treat him with a flight to Independence, Oregon, (7S5) for breakfast at the renowed Starduster Cafe, located on the airfield.

Yesterday, with beautiful weather, we finally made the flight, down for breakfast.  Coming out of Pearson Field, we requested transit southbound through the PDX Class C airspace.  Usually, that would involve crossing PDX midfield, but this time they told us, after departing west, to simply turn left southbound (there must not have been any departures or arrivals at PDX at the time).  We took the opportunity to fly over downtown Portland and check out the scenery, and then went direct to Independence for breakfast.

After breakfast, there was a family of three, including a little boy about three or four years old.  We invited him to come sit in the airplane to have a look.  We put the headsets on him and his mom took lots of pictures.  He was a picture of excitement and terror.  They watched and waved as we took off, headed back to Pearson.

We decided to take the long way home, mostly to avoid the complexity of coming through Portland’s airspace.  Along the way, we flew over Hagg Lake.  The skies were nearly empty that morning and we saw only one other plane the whole morning, despite the perfect weather.

My Dad was my first passenger who didn’t freak out on his first flight in the plane!  Kudos to him.