John & Anne Wiley

2011/01/14

Going Up

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 07:09

I’m surprised it’s taking me so long to go through the pix from yesterday’s flight. After posting the snaps of the new copper dome, we got distracted with lots of other stuff. Anyway, just now I looked through the first few and here are some favs from the flight. Just after takeoff UCSB looked especially lovely, and since it was a bit hazy I’d mounted the polarizing filter. The result is both better and worse than without, since it reduces haze but makes colors a bit strange and reduces sharpness a bit. Fun to see it differently, and at least in terms of haze more like how it looks when we’re flying.

4468 UCSB Polarized

4468 UCSB Polarized

Click to see the larger version here, or better yet visit our Photo Page (link in right column) to see an even larger and sharper version. Such a beautiful campus and setting!

We climbed over the ridge West of Painted Cave near what I think is a gun club, and this stand of trees with the island background was captivating.

4486 Huddled Trees On Top

4486 Huddled Trees On Top

I’m hoping to look at and post more pix from the flight tomorrow. Such fun to “re-fly” it via the photos.

2011/01/12

Bird Bath

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 08:32

The pool atop the Canary Hotel in downtown SB was the first thing guessed by an Edhat reader in the enigmatic second collection of seven I submitted yesterday. This shot shows more context, but I’d cropped the Edhat one so it only shows the pool making it hard to tell it’s on the roof. Somehow a reader was familiar enough with it to recognize it from the air at night, even though it’s the tallest building in that area and very few people fly over the city at night with enough time to pick out landmarks. Pretty impressive!

4438 Lit Canary Pool

4438 Lit Canary Pool

Santa Barbara High School’s stadium looked really cool, with athletes and spectators seemingly unaware of the night just beyond the lights.

4368 Night Game

4368 Night Game

I like the accent of bright lights hitting the trees to give everything an ethereal frame, and took another shot from a different angle on the return flight.

4444 SBHS Revisited

4444 SBHS Revisited

2011/01/11

Night Flight

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Random,SB Region — John @ 05:28

We love to fly at night, especially over familiar Santa Barbara where so many scenes are no longer familiar. As the light fades over the harbor, a whole different look comes over everything.

4352 SB Nightfall

4352 SB Nightfall

Same with nearby Carpinteria, as unlit areas form into black shapes nestled among streets and homes.

4363 Carp Darkening

4363 Carp Darkening

Shopping center parking lots become oddly shaped pools of light surrounding the dark roofs of buildings, sprinkled among traffic and lights of all sorts.

4403 Five Point Lights

4403 Five Point Lights

The familiar downtown bus depot becomes a geometric study in light and dark.

4429 Depot & Darkness

4429 Depot & Darkness

2011/01/05

Two in a Row

Filed under: by Anne,Flying,Has Photos,Nature,Random,SB Region — Anne @ 08:41

After such a rainy month, we delighted to see clear skies, and treated ourselves to flying two days in a row.  John explained our transponder problem, so Monday we took a quick 15 minutes to check it out.  ATC sent us out over the ocean, so we flew higher and got different views than usual of shore.  I like the clouds sitting in stacks on the mountains:

1208 Clouds Grabbing Hills

1208 Cloud Smoke Stacks

Tuesday we settled on our preferred plan to replace the transponder and headed to San Luis Obispo to purchase and get it installed. On our way I got the snowy background of the Sierra Madres, beyond Cachuma Lake.

1243 Cacuma Lake & Snow

1243 Cacuma Lake & Snow

The sun was setting on our flight home, so soft pink skies and twinkling lights through the green Santa Ynez valley accompanied our flight, made even more pleasant with our new transponder.  I dreamily enjoyed the shimmering SY valley, the ocean view as we came over the mountain, and approaching the city lights of SB.  I felt, as I so often have, so very lucky!  And grateful & inspired that John pursued his dream of flying, and went through the rigors of getting a pilot’s license. I’m glad his dream included flying with me too!

by ~Anne

2011/01/04

Rainbow Halo

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Nature,Random,SB Region,Tripp — John @ 03:12

We finally got up for a short flight today, and saw a magical rainbow halo around a little cloud. We climbed high trying to get our transponder to work. That’s a little box that sends an ID number to ATC so they can tell at a glance who we are, to more conveniently distinguish us from the other planes flying around SBA. It was working perfectly since we bought Tripp, but coming home from Christmas in San Diego it decided to stop working when we landed to see friends in LA. Tomorrow we might fly to SLO for a replacement, but today while testing it one last time we got this treat.

4262 Cloud Rainbow Halo

4262 Cloud Rainbow Halo

The cloud was about over Hwy.154 in the Santa Ynez Valley, and rain falling on the slopes beyond made a really cool rainbow behind the little cloud. We’d thought about flying in that direction to see snow on the higher slopes of the Sierra Madre, but as you can see they’re all covered in clouds. Just as well, since without the transponder our preference was to stay closer to home. Sure was nice to fly again, because it’s been more than a week!

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