Now, some explaining might be in order here.
We rented a car and Grendel boldly grabbed the steering wheel, trying to learn the tricks of local trafficing. And it wasn't that easy. The locals seemed to be quite horrible drivers. I mean, their driving style. Very aggressive, neck to neck, and there was some interesting habits that a foreigner wouldn't immediately know. So we asked some guidance from the locals and took off very carefully. Grendel as the pilot, OK as navigator and Cosmo as rear gunner / radio operator.

First we headed north, towards the old airfield we'd found from maps. I was supposedly the same airfield, that was in use during wartime, same place where Finnish pilots landed when travelling between Finland and Germany. Historical site! It took a bit of adventuring to find it, because it clearly wasn't in use anymore. The Soviet build terminal was no more in use, except there were people playing billiards inside. Quite nice billiards hall! But where's the airfield itself? Finally we took a small side road and voila, in the end loomed the airfield space. Again, in quite unused condition. Local aerial clubs had taken the field, though. We'd seen chaps doing parachute jumps from those AN-2s from our hotel's window, and quite a large and nice place they had, all for themselves. There were also some companies doing aerial stuff, and one hangar was for local flying hobbyists.

Then the real adventure started. We drove towards the south airfield, wanting to see what kind of aerial activity that place has to offer. Well, finding it wasn't that easy. We ended up driving back and forth on the highway, trying to find a clue to the airport, but nothing. No signs. Nothing. Finally we drove a bit towards the town, and then turned at every single intersection, finally seeing helicopters at the end of one road. Yes! Drove there, saw old warplane bunkers, more helicopters and so on. Stopped there and started looking at the planes, shooting pictures over the fence.
Someone comes, asks something in unknown language, waves us in and opens the gate, then somebody else comes and greets us in English. Nice! Then comes the surprise. "So you came here to fly?" Err. Fly? What? "You've heard about us on internet or something, and you want to see Riga from air?" Err. What? Dammit. What a chance. We glanced at each other and well, the aviator spirits immediately started screaming "fly! fly! fly!". Heck. We just came to see the airfield, had no clue what there is and here we got an aviation company who offers us a flight over Riga. Damn great! So we pooled the money and prepared ourselves. The company has a nice clean Cessna, which was good - they seemed to have good facilities and the plane was in good condition, so we dared to step in.
It was an interesting flight, I can say. The airfield itself felt kind like wild west. It was abandoned Soviet Air Force field, with no restrictions, you could just drive to the runway directly from the highway. Our Cessna was rolling on the runway - and some kids were pedalling with their bikes on our wingtip. We could see cards, motorbikes, walkers, joggers etc on the runway - at the same time as the plane. Wow. Not the way things were done in Finland... The flight itself was very nice and we took a nice good look at the town from above. We came back, did a touch'n'go, flew around the field and landed. Over a car that was parked in mid runway, with chaps calmly smoking a cigarette, watching how an airplane roars towards them and passes them above to land... You got to watch the Video 4 to see that stuff yourself - you can see people and cars etc going on the runway when we're taking off or landing. Whoah. By the way, Ok flew the whole trip, from the takeoff to landings and even rolled it. The whole things. And he is "just" a glider pilot. Fun :) The chap was a flight teacher and he guided Ok on what to do and let Ok then do the stuff himself. And after we parted, I just *HAD* to try what driving on the runway feels like... See the video...

But thanks to the chaps of Paraleks, the flight was very nice and if any of the readers want to try flying at Latvia, visit their website and book a flight: www.cessna.lv.