He carried no passenger documentation and hadn’t paid for a ticket with a credit card — or in fact bought a ticket at all. All transactions related to the flight were handled with cash. No security guard had even glanced at the knife disguised among the keys on his keychain, and he had managed to avoid stepping through a single metal detector. Needless to say, he hadn’t had his boots inspected for hidden bombs at any point, and he probably didn’t turn off his cell phone during takeoff or landing.

This is okay, though, because the only life on the line is his, and a Cessna 172 probably lacks the mass to make much of an impression on anyone but the pilot and passengers.

After a brief preflight, I was tossed into the pilot’s seat, introduced to myriad dials, switches were flipped, buttons pushed, and then the needle was twitching past sixty and I was pulling up up up up over a now-empty runway and the shaving-mirror-doubletake-familiar wreckage of another Cessna 172 that had lost an argument with gravity the week before. Dumbarton bridge traffic was light; we were in Fremont in minutes, and I was banking through a raincloud, chasing a double rainbow. Of the experience as a whole the best summary I can offer is that I was unsurprised to discover that unlike on the ground, in the air you can actually catch up to rainbows.

It’s hard to believe how firm — reckless? — it’s safe to be, three thousand feet up and meandering through the sky in a plane with the same homey creakiness (if not the cabin space) as the family’s first station wagon. Already tired of my gentle banking, Sergey said, “it is not a woman. You do not have to be gentle.” and stomped first on one rudder pedal then the other a few times, sending us slewing sickeningly sideways with my stomach scampering after. I gave a gamely grim grin and offered a harder 45 degree bank. Sergey approved. “Good!”

We flew around for half an hour, with Sergey ordering me to certain altitudes or to turn a particular direction but otherwise letting me wander about. I chased cars on 880 and learned how quickly altitude can get away from you over the Coyote hills.

Eventually we flew back across the bay. Sergey pointed out the runway and told me to ‘approach 31’ which I apparently did. I swung once to parallel, made my turn, came into line, and turned again to set up approach. I kept waiting for Sergey to take the controls for the landing. “Is this good?” I asked. “Will you hit the runway?” he replied. With flaps fully extended and the engine at near the stall speed, steering has an absurd, mushy lag sickeningly familiar to the recreational user of hallucinogens. The relationship between the controls and the behavior of the plane becomes difficult to understand. Landing seemed implausible; it seemed a foolish invitation to bring the universe’s attention back to our indecorous flouting of gravity’s conventions. As I swung and staggered toward the ground I had visions of coming down almost straight enough, of the plane hopping from one wheel to another and pinwheeling off the runway. Sergey appeared unconcerned. I have no recollection of looking at the altimeter. I had no idea what I was doing. As we approached, Sergey stomped twice, right-left to bring us better in line, dropped the final distance, and we bounced to a stop with Sergey ‘dancing’ the pedals to smooth out the ride.

It was not hard. It might have been harder if Sergey had at any point paused for too long, or asked me whether I wanted to continue or given me the option of bowing out of a harder task. He handled me perfectly.