Jake gave Renee and me a great memory tonight. We were in bed, at about 10:30 or so, watching the end of the baseball game (Go Dodgers!). My phone rang and I saw that it was Jake, which immediately struck me as odd because I knew he was flying and had checked his position on FlightRadar just a few minutes earlier. He was doing the "Toledo Ten" with his instruction (ten up and downs at Toledo Express) and was maybe half way through that the last time I checked. There was no way he finished and went back to BG in that timeframe.

So I answered with a bit of a quizzical tone. "Hey, what's up?"

He responded immediately - "go outside!", which made me realize right away that he was about to fly over the house. We quickly looked out the bedroom window, but he insisted we go outside. So Renee and I hurried down the stairs, with Teddy excitedly in tow, and headed out onto the back patio. As soon as we opened the back door, we could hear him and within what seems now like a second or two, we watched him fly directly overhead. The night was crystal clear and you could see the lights of the plane fly right over us. And the sound.

I was still on the phone with him, and said "wow Jake, just wow." The connection was a bit shaky and eventually dropped, so I didn't get to say much more.

We watched him fly down the Maumee River to downtown Toledo for as long as we could (he later told me that they did my commute, from Perrysburg to downtown, in three minutes, which seems to fit with about how long we watched him fly into the distance). Eventually the cold got us (I had nothing on my feet and the patio was cold!) and we headed back upstairs.

Once we were back upstairs, Renee checked on his flight and noticed he had turned Eastward for the return trip to BG, taking him near her parents house. She texted them to tell them. They were still up (Go Dodgers!), and looked out their back window just in time, cathing him as he flew over the fields behind their house.

He called me about a half an hour later after he had landed and was headed back to his dorm room. He asked how clearly we were able to see him. "Perfectly. What a beautiful night for a flight."

I thanked him, too. What a neat thing for Renee and I to experience, and what a thoughful thing for him to do.

Jake took this photo during that flight, probably right after our call dropped and while Renee and I were standing on the patio watching him head toward downtown Toledo. You can see the lighted central pillar of the Veteran's Glass City Skyway just left of center.