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Well it was a fun weekend.  As an early Father\’s Day present Gail (my stepmom) and I paid for my dad to take a flight on a Russian Mig 21 trainer.  My dad is really into flying video games and is always asking for new people to fly with.  Over the last year or so, this Mig has been flying over my dad\’s house every weekend.  The owner lives in Red Bluff and the airport is less than a mile away.  Gail and I have been talking about this for a while and finally decided this year was the time to do it. 

I drove to Red Bluff Saturday morning and met my dad, Gail, my grandfather (who pitched in to pay for the flight) and my brother.  We left for the airport and two minutes later we were there.  It was very exciting to see the plane for the first time and even more exciting to see how excited my dad was!  I came prepared with the video camera to record everything from arrival to departure.  Dad had another video camera to record his flight in air.  Gail was armed with the still camera. 

As the plane started up its jet engine, I could smell the jet fuel and began recording as my dad got buckeled into the seat, put his helmet on and got ready to take off.  I ran down to the other end of the tarmack to record as the plane started its journey to the runway.  As it passed us, I could see dad with his camera taping us, taping him!  When they finally reached the runway, I could hear the jet engine rev up and watched as it passed us by and left the ground.  It was amazing to see this 33 year old plane that was once used to train Russian pilots for combat take off with my dad in it.  It flu until we could no longer see it, then a few minutes later, we could no longer hear it.

Twenty minutes later, we started to hear it again as it returned from its tour of Tehema and Shasta counties.  As it came into view, we anticipated hearing all about his trip.  I recorded as the plane landed and came back around.  I ran toward the plane as it rolled passed us toward the hanger.  I was quite out of breath by the time I got there, but I didn\’t want to miss my dad\’s first words as he exited the plane, which were \”Man, it\’s hot in there!\”.   As he got out of the plane, and took off his flight suit, he couldn\’t help but talk about all that he had seen and done.  He got to actually fly the plane for a little while. 

After the plane was safely put away in its hanger, we thanked pilot Pete Taylor and headed to the airport restaurant for some lunch afterwhich I headed home.

I spent all of Sunday editing the video footage from both cameras.  It\’s almost done.  I jsut have a little more to do before burning it to DVD and sending it to my dad this week so he can show the world about his once in a lifetime experience.

To see still photos of the day, click here: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/litlone873/slideshow?.dir=/bf83scd&.src=ph