A couple nights ago long time friend and fellow caffeine peddler/small plane pilot, Nat took Mei and I up into San Diego’s most inner outasphere. For most of the time we were about 3000 feet above sea level but the ground below us looked teasingly touchable. Like being the puck on an air hockey table with a map painted on.

We took off from El Cajon’s Gillespie Field which I would have never known existed. Then north up the 15 passing over Santee, Scripps Ranch, Rancho Penasquitos and doing a quick touch and go landing (“smooth like milk” it was) at Palomar airport before circling around and coming back down along the coast.

I couldn’t believe how peaceful it was. The plane itself was bloody noisy, but your encapsulated in your microphone headsets where there is nothing more than an eerie silence and the occasional conversation of “hey, isn’t that …” I kept saying ’10-4′ and ‘over and out,’ but my fun was discouraged by veterans Nat and Mei.

I can’t believe I forgot to take my camera. Cruising directly over my work and the sparce lighting of North County’s coast, a strange possesiveness started to take over me. All of a sudden it felt like we were flying over my work, my city, my house, the beaches I’ve surfed at. It was probably an unhealthly feeling, but something warm and fuzzy creeped up inside me when I realized I was attached to this place. After moving around so much my entire life I kinda figured that I could never be attached to any place. Funny that it ended up being this conservative, segregated, military town.

Now we were cruising along Imperial Beach and cars below seemed to be floating on water. It must have been a bridge over a lagoon or small bay. Imperial Beach is probably the lone San Diego neigborhood that I still haven’t explored.

And then Nat pointed beyond the nose of the plane and said, ‘isn’t it crazy how different Tijuana looks from up here?’ He was right. Where San Diego was divided into more or less enclosed grids of lighted areas with bright passageways connecting them, Tijuana was a blanket of bright light. There is no geometry to Tijuana (as anyone who has tried to navigate its streets will tell you) . It’s shape is completely organic, stretching up along its hillsides and down increasingly brighter until climaxing at a strange orgy of luminescence at the San Ysidro border crossing. The only respite of light in Tijuana at all is the steep grade – a menace to all old school TJ taxis – that separates Tijuana from it’s coastal twin, Playas.

Nat commented that if we crossed the border and re-entered without warning on the radio that we would be chased down by a Border Patrol jet. This sounded like great fun to me and I exclaimed, “10-4, 10-4,” but Nat and Mei were less enthusiastic.

Nat banked left and we started our journey back to El Cajon over downtown and the Mid-city area. Down below us large commercial jets were making their way into San Diego International Airport.

“How come those plains aren’t giving you props over the radio Nat? They’re not dissin’ are they,” I inquired.
“No, no Oso. Nobody disses Nat. They’re just on a different frequency.”

He played around with the controls a while trying to find their frequency, but our interest in giving the big guys shout outs was half ass. We passed over the bright arteries of University Avenue and El Cajon Avenue which really looked like – along with the 8 and 5 freeways – the lifeblood feeding into the heart of San Diego. And then we landed, hungry for burritos.

It was epic and I can’t thank Nat enough for taking us up there.