Women Fly!

I BELIEVE I CAN FLY: Saturday afternoon was big fun for us. We headed down to The Museum of flight for some special WomenFly!-related events.

A week or so prior, I found out the Museum was offering free flights in small planes to girls and women, and signed Annabelle up right away for a spot on a 4-seater.

We got down to the Museum at about 12:30 and went to the signed in room. There, I was pretty much told I'd be joining Annabelle on the flight. Oh, OK. :) We were quickly ushered out to the tarmac. We were initially told this gentleman would be our pilot, but then he had to excuse himself to go to the potty, so we shifted to another plane this size.

Tom was our new pilot. He said the lil single prop plane only weighed 1,600 pounds. It was definitely smaller than my Honda CR-V on the inside.

We climbed on in, Annabelle and I in the back, pilot Tom and another young flyer up front.

We had a Teddy Bear for a co-pilot. That assuaged any flying fears, to be sure. ;)

We started out by heading south. We looked for Christian and CJ along the fence line at The Museum of Flight, but I couldn't pick them out. I think they're between the second and third white signs from the left on the fence in the photo below.

 We started climbing higher (thankfully) immediately.

As soon as we cleared the museum, I saw this fuselage and wing on the ground. It almost looked like it has crashed there. Wasn't super reassuring.

Annabelle didn't seem worried, though. Seriously, she acted as if she'd flown in a tiny plane all her life, like we were just going to the grocery store or something.

Soon, we took a 180-degree turn and started heading back toward Seattle, flying east of I-5. Nice views of Mercer Island and the Cascades.

Before long, we could see the ribbon of concrete that is the floating 520 Bridge over Lake Washington.

Soon, we took a turn toward the west ... right over Husky stadium!!!

I could see the renovations in progress and the squads running plays in spring training on the practice field!

Before I knew it, we were looking over the Ballard Locks (to the right) and Magnolia - our 'hood!

I could tell we were turning right over our neighborhood. I didn't try to pick our house out at the time, I just started shooting, knowing I'd find it afterward. The railroad tracks form the eastern border to our neighborhood.

Here's where things started to get funny. :) *Just* when we were flying over the golf course next to the tracks, Kennedy was down there teeing off!

And as I took a closer look and found our house, I could see that a car was parked in the alley next to our place. Based on its size and color, we deduced it to be Rick's car. That's right boys, we're spying on you, even when we're not home!

It was fun seeing kids scurry about the baseball diamond at the end of our block.

We were headed back toward Boeing Field.

First, we had to pass Seattle Center. Pretty groovy looking from this angle.

And before we knew it, the Boeing Field runway was in our sites!

As soon as we touched down, we dashed inside the Museum of Flight. In a small room off the theater, there was a reception for members with Dr. Ashley Stroupe of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

What an amazing woman! A staff engineer at JPL, Stroupe works in flight operations for the Mars rovers. She's the first woman to 'drive' rovers on Mars (Spirit and Opportunity), and now she works with the Mars Science Laboratory. 

She was joined on stage by Kavya Manyapu, an aspiring astronaut and a current flight test engineer for Boeing.

They were both so well spoken, accomplished, driven, insightful and encouraging. They basically outlined a road map of how to be successful for anyone who should care to follow in their footsteps. Awesome!