All Before a Day's Work

Air Mike Flight #54

Early morning over beautiful Lake Tahoe.

Life of a busy Weimar College student: clean the house Friday morning, almost forget to go to Revelation class at 11:20, practice with music group all afternoon, go to vespers, hang out with Erwin till 10:30 after vespers, choir performance at church on Sabbath morning, hang out with friends Sabbath afternoon, try unsuccessfully to study all day Sunday, go to bed at 8:30, wake up super early and…go flying?!

Yup, that’s the way it rolls when you live the double life of a student and a pilot. Sometimes you just fly when the opportunity arises, even if it’s right at the beginning of a busy day of classes and work. At least you can temporarily push all the deadlines and homework to the side and forget about the woes of school life for a couple hours.



A potential candidate for the proposed

Weimar Flight School.

 The reason for the early morning flight was the destination, one of California’s great sights that I’ve recently started taking my friends up to see: world-famous Lake Tahoe. Since flying in the mountains is done in the morning, that translates to sometime around sunrise for a guy like me who has classes at 9:00. Not a problem, as long as the passengers are up for it!

 I met my crew bright and early at 6:00 and we headed for the airport. Brandon, my media intern friend, had his sister Tiffani visiting and he wanted her to see Tahoe from the air before she went home. Ben, a fellow bass in the choir, completed the crew and got to ride shotgun. He’d brought breakfast along and was intending on finishing eating after we got airborne; of course that didn't happen. We took off and soon as we were airborne I gave him control of the airplane. He didn’t get another chance to touch his food—he flew us there and back.





Sister and brother.

Because the flight direction faces east, the rising sun low on the horizon is somewhat annoying as it’s in your eyes for almost the whole flight out to the lake. But once you arrive at the lake and turn south to follow the shoreline, suddenly everything comes into vivid, stunning color. The wide blue expanse of water is so perfectly situated among the snowcapped peaks of the surrounding Sierras. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the first explorer who came across this spectacular mountain sea. No doubt he would have been extremely jealous had he known someday people would be flying over it.





Emerald Bay gets its name from the deep shade of green the

water has when seen from the ground. The water is simply

reflecting the surrounding mountainsides which are covered

with evergreen trees.



 We did our all-too-brief tour of the lake, flying past the famous Emerald Bay. Then it was time to head back to the field. Instead of following the freeway back, we took the more direct route, to avoid some cloud layers that were pushing in from the northwest. A couple circles around the Weimar College campus to top off the flight, and then we were touching down at Auburn. Half an hour later it was nothing but a recent memory, almost like a dream. Enough borrowing from time I didn't have; back to school!