One saturday morning, a friend who had solo'ed very recently, wanted to go flying. So I said, "Okay, where ya wanna go?". He said he didn't care, let's just go. So I looked over the sectional and picked a route that would take us out and about for a few hours.

It was about 8am by the time we took off and after we got into formation, we headed for our first destination, New Jerusalem. This is an interesting place to land, only because it's a nice smooth, long runway with absolutely no buildings to be seen anywhere. Just a mile long runway in the middle of nowhere.

As we were flying near Modesto, we were just clearing some of the cloud tops, so I motioned for us to climb a little. The clouds were at 1300 feet and scattered, so it was no big deal. As we got past Modesto, and still 10 miles from our destination, we could both see a glory on the clouds underneath us. A glory, for those that are unfamiliar, is a rainbow in a complete circle, much like you'd see when looking at your yard being watered with the sun at your back.

The further we went, the thicker the clouds got. I decided we better get under them, before we got trapped on top. I saw a nice big break in the clouds and motioned with my arm a big circle a few times then pointed down. My friend nodded in aggreement, and with that, I turned and dropped through the break in a steep spiral. As soon as I got under the cloud base, I pulled out to straight and level to give my friend room to come through. He was right behind me, and we flew on towards New Jerusalem.

We flew over the top of the runway at mid-field and entered the pattern, even though no one was there (it's good practice), and landed. After warming up a bit, we decided to fly to tracy airport on our way north. On the way, we saw 3 hot air balloons enjoying the morning calm, and we flew along, giving them room, more for their comfort than ours. We landed at Tracy, and talked with a few of the fellows on the ground. There were a couple of older gentlemen who were general aviation pilots, and a guy who was just putting away his powered parachute. After warming up again, we flew on towards Byron airport, now staying under the clouds, as they had risen to 1800 or 2000 feet. We entered the pattern and landed at Byron, now really cold, even though we had only flown 10 miles.

I looked over the sectional and decided we could fly low over the delta directly to Lodi airport. My friend agreed as he was cold too. We took off from Byron, and once clear of the airport area, dropped down to do some low-level flying over the islands in the delta. The delta is an area of hundreds of square miles near San Francisco, that used to all be underwater. In the 1800s they built levees, and pumped the water from the areas encircled by the levees, to make islands. Each of these is actually below sea level, and they do flood on occasion during heavy winds that break the levees.

So we are flying across these islands at an elevation of maybe 20 feet, climbing only to cross the levees. At least it's much warmer this close to the ground, and we are quite comfortable, not to mention the fun factor! As we cross the last levee, I motion for us to climb, so we can enter the pattern at Lodi. We land and tie down, just in time for lunch. After lunch I look at the sky, and the clouds are almost gone! Just a few here and there, so off we go, headed back for Oakdale. We climb to see how high the clouds really are, and they are at 4,000 feet! We continue on and finally land at Oakdale an hour from when we left Lodi. My friend says thanks for the trip, and I fuel up for a bit more flying. But that is another story!