Last November, I was thinking about a cool place to fly. I promised my co-RA April that I would fly her out to Chicago, so I booked a plane for the entire day. The night before the flight I thought the clouds would be too low across Indiana and Ohio for me to fly. The day of the flight, I woke up and all I could see was the blue sky. I planned a trip for us to fly to Chicago executive airport via the shoreline, so we could get a view of the skyline. I’ve flown in the area before, but I hadn’t flown into Chicago executive before. The entire day pretty much had to be near perfect for me to fly out far out and still get back the same day. This day offered just that, and we were on our way to OSU airport around 10am. Everything was the usual. Fall offers great hues and we took great advantage of that. We could see the leaves changing colors and the trees were bright orange and red. She had never flown in a small plane before, so she was excited. We were flying above the clouds and then below the clouds on the last half of the way there. The flight to Chicago was about thirty minutes longer than our flight back. We were flying with another general aviation plane about two miles off to our right on its way towards Lake Michigan. Once I reached Gary, Indiana, I was handed over to Chicago approach and that was filled with Southwest airlines pilots. It took a while before I could get in a word. As I was flying along the shore line, I saw the Bears stadium, the Bean, the Cubs stadium and other landmarks. I’ve seen other pilots fly this route which made me want to fly in front of the Chicago. After I made a pass to my left, I circled around so the city would be off my right wing for my co-RA to see. We eventually landed at Chicago and we were greeted with the best FBO I’ve ever been to. We Ubered into the city and we ate deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati’s. Their meat lovers’ deep dish is really good; I highly recommend it. After we finished eating, we went back to executive for our flight back. The airport is about ten miles north of O’Hare, so I had to be cognizant of the airspace. Again, I flew in front of the skyline for the photo pass. We had a nice tailwind with nice weather, so our flight was pretty short. I didn’t get a chance to show her the campus from above since it was already dark. I thought it was crazy to go to Chicago, eat lunch, and be back on campus by night
