Last trip to Seattle before Julie and Paul moved to Wichita, I met up with my cousin Andy Ruschak, as usual, to spend some time with him and his wife Miki, (who is a flight attendant with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines). It was such fantastic weather in the Seattle area, (quite unusual for the area quite honestly), that Andy, who has his private pilots license, asked if I wanted to go for a ride and split the cost with him. YOU BETCHA!

So, Julie drives me out to Renton Municipal Airport, to meet Andy for my first flight in a private airplane. It was actually pretty exciting to be up and above Seattle. While the weather was good, it was a little hazy, (not used to two weeks of solid sun and no rain), so the pictures arent that great, but it was a lot of fun!

While up there, I decided I had better pay a little bit of attention to Andy and what he was doing. Since it was just the two of us up there, if anything happened to him, I would be a goner, (so I was thinking), "Okay, pay attention Annemarie." "You could fly this plane if you had to. You press what button to talk to the tower? And you move the throttle which way to ascend, descend, etc. Okay, okay nothing is gonna happen to him. He's only 6 years older than me, and fairly fit." The US Navy has seen to that. Oh yeah, Andy is a Lieutenant Commader in the US Navy.

Hmm, after the flight, which was an awesome treat, we had to 'RACE' to Bremerton Naval Base from Renton, (approximately 58 miles in distance from each other), so that Andy could pick up his dress uniform that was being altered, that he needed the next day.  Unfortunately for us, there was a ton of traffic trying to get from Renton to Bremerton and on top of that, Andy didn't have enough gas to get us there, so while we were sitting in traffic, he was constantly turning off his truck and trying to coast a bit...the unfortunate part is that Andy's truck has automatic steering, therefor the power goes off, and the ability to steer the car is no longer viable. : - (   

We finally get to the gate at Bremerton, the area where he has to pick up his uniform is supposedly to close at 6pm, and we pull onto base at 5:58pm, and the guard shack is checking everyone's id - including mine even though I'm in the passenger seat, and therfore took up some time because I had to dig for my driver's license. Andy said they've never done that before - - granted this was also Pre- 9/11/01 - - anyway, we got on base, with seconds to spare Andy ran in and grabbed his dress uniform. Phew! : - )  I've never seen him stress out so bad before!

Anyway, here's some pics from our day out. Too bad I ruined one set of film while we were flying. : - (