TRIP TO LIVERMORE

    On a sunny afternoon a few weeks back, I decided to take a friend of mine for a joy plane ride around 2 pm. We were initially planning on a standard bay tour, taking off from Palo Alto and flying over the Colosseum and Bay Bridge over to the Golden Gate, and returning via Half Moon Bay. Unfortunately, there was a TFR over the SF bay and so we decided to fly in and around the South Bay area. We took off with a customary left dumbarton departure with the hope of getting to half moon bay and back before the late afternoon clouds cover the coast. As we neared the crystal springs lake, I began to realize that flying into Half Moon Bay might be a risky option, given the rate at which the clouds were closing in. So yet again, we had to change plans and this time I decided to transition over to Livermore after hovering a couple of minutes over Stanford. Catching a glimpse of the Cardinals and Buffaloes game in the Stanford Stadium (there was a TFR for a 3 mile radius around the Stanford Stadium as well), we headed over towards the Dumbarton
auto bridge for the transition towards Livermore.

    Once we approached Livermore, I called in to the Livermore tower and was cleared for landing on 25L and requested for a full stop. Though I have flown to Livermore a few times and have done a lot of traffic pattern work there, I never actually went on to park the plane before. As a result, when the tower asked me if I would like to park in the North parking or South, I started pondering what I should answer. As our main goal was to find a place where  that we could hang out for a cup of coffee, since I vaguely remembered that the north portion of the airport seemed to have more activity, I asked for the North Parking. Once I landed, I made the silly mistake of taking the Romeo exit towards the left instead of taking alpha to the right. So the ground asked me to circle back to 25L and I crossed over 25L and 25R to take the alpha taxi way and Delta exit onto Juliet and the Guest parking. Once we parked the plane, we headed out to the terminal where we were told that there was a nice Bar and Grill restaurant named Beeb's, about 10 minutes from the airport towards the west. It indeed turned out to be a pretty good restaurant right across from the Los Positas Golf Course. They had some good options for vegetarians. Especially their veggie sandwich (which I ended up ordering) was pretty good and still is one of the best I have eaten.

    After spending an hour or so there, we headed back to the airport and the return flight was pretty uneventful with the standard left traffic for 31 at palo alto and a pretty smooth landing.