USA LA! Home Sweet Home : '04 Helicopter Tour!

October 12

Our pilot Robin with a Celebrity Helicopters associate, and Ken with 500lbs of camera gear around his neck. It was a door-free complete and total 100% blast and neither of us for one second felt the least hesitation.

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Here's a link to the company's website: Celebrity Helicopters.

The pilot, Robin Petgrave, was on the Tavis Smiley show the night we rode with him, talking about his youth programs. Click here for audio and extended coverage. It's worth a listen.

Ken's house(!).

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Ken's favorite shot of the Manhattan Beach Pier.

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Manhattan Beach Pier (A-GlowGlow).

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Oh yeah, we saw the whites of their eyes.

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I'm crazy for the sand in this one. You can actually see both piers, Manhattan in the foreground and Hermosa in the far distance.

For tech-types and PS devotees this is amusing, from Ken 'Here's one of yours. Lot of cropping--I tried to keep in most of the patterns-in-the-sand stuff since you seemed to favor that part of the composition. This started as a 4000dpi scan so it was a little trickier to reduce to 640x480.'

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From Ken 'Hermosa Beach Pier and Pier Avenue Plaza, the South Bay's hot party nexus for twenty- and thirty-somethings. Essentially all the storefronts on both sides of the one-block pedestrian mall at the foot of the pier are bars.'

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From Ken 'Nice aspect of that shot is that, looking north from 2nd St. at the south end of Hermosa, it covers just about all of the tiny 1.2 mile-long Hermosa Beach coastline, which ends just shy of the northern (Manhattan) pier. Also shows killer buildings.'

I was gaga over the killer buildings feature of this shot. In the big version you can see the residents brushing their teeth. Cool on the coastline too.

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That's right, we buzzed the Goodyear Blimp. Robin radioed the blimp pilot to ask if 'his photographers' could take some shots and the guy radioed back 'wull sure, ok'.

That Robin really was a wonder just like he said he was. We didn't get the least short shrift not being, you know, celebrities or anything - he gave us celebrity treatment. More like professional treatment, taking our requests seriously and making every idea happen.

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Head ON!

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Yup, we circled that baby.

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The World Famous Hermosa Beach Windmill.

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Maybe I just didn't want it to be over? On the way back I kept noticing this and that that simply had to be photographed. Robin was keen and eager. Ken was kind and patient.

I have no idea what this is but it's cool, huh!

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It's hard to choose without doing them up... There's this one, one that features the freeway, and one that features the busses. Maybe you'll have to look at them all!

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Coming in at the Compton Airport.

It was interesting that the helicopters had to land in the same flight pattern as a plane even though they don't need the runway the idea being not to confuse anyone or get in anyone's way. Kinda like life.

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Our flying companion Caroline.

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Yowuza wow-ee that was all just too much fun for a real word.

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(included in this story: Ken Sarno, Robin Petgrave)