On The Road

For the past few weeks (maybe months) Karleigh has been getting really excited about what she planned for my birthday.  She knows I don’t really ever do anything big for my birthday so she decided to change that this year.

My real birthday is in two days but she planned a lot of stuff for today.  She told me I had to get work off today and that she would kill my boss if he didn’t let me have it off.  He wisely obliged my request but I still had no idea why I was taking it off.

This morning we got up and went to Kneaders for some french toast before heading out on my mystery trip.  I tried throwing out a few guesses as to where we were going but I really had no idea.  Karleigh was driving and we headed down 800 N. in Orem so I knew we were going up Provo Canyon but that was about it.  The canyon leads to a ton of stuff.  She said we weren’t going out of the state so Wyoming and Colorado were off the list which left me thinking about Heber, Park City, and that’s about it.  There are more options, I’ve just never been on a lot of the highways out there so I have no idea where they go.

When we got to Heber she turned right which is a road I have never been on (I have only ever turned left when pulling into Heber).  We drove down the road a while then she started laughing and pulled a U turn and went back to Heber then turned like we were going back down the canyon back to Utah Valley.  I was very confused.  Then we turned off the highway and went to the small Heber airport.  I started getting some ideas but I couldn’t really nail down what it was quite yet.  They have an air museum up there and some cool planes outside and also a small flight school and a company that does glider rides.  Well… it was the last one.  She got me a glider flight which was awesome and I’ve never been up in one before.

The flight was awesome.  We flew over the Heber airport while we gained altitude then headed towards the backside of Timpanogos and then kinda in the direction of Snowbird.  Since it was still early and there weren’t a ton of thermals yet we were towed up to 10,000′ (the airport is at about 5,600′).  When the cable was released it was a weird feeling, I just watched it spring forward and the tow plane banked right, dropped altitude, and was gone and we were left just hanging above the mountains.

We were able to catch some small updrafts from the wind that comes up the canyon and then hits the mountains to gain some altitude but it was amazing how little altitude we lost over time even without the thermals.  When we crossed over Deer Creek Reservoir he let me take the controls and I flew us over to the mountains above Wallsburg.  I caught a small updraft on the way there too but our time was soon running out.  Tom (the instructor) took the controls and flew us back to the airport after that.

It was really cool to fly in something like that where you don’t hear the engine roaring and you don’t have to wear a headset to communicate, you can just talk normally.   The crazy thing is the fun isn’t even over yet.  Apparently there is still something planned for tonight and I already got a new Wii game, a sweet t-shirt, and new sunglasses.  I think it’s going to be a birthday to remember.