Things to Do in Rowland Heights

"Shake it!" your headset blares as you push on the jet's throttle. Your nose tips, the ground becomes a wall, and you're diving in a last-ditch effort to lose the fighter behind you. Its shots go wide and it swoops overhead, leaving you to level out just as the radio tower ends the dogfight: "Knock it off, knock it off." With your wheels back on the ground, you step out of the simulator's cockpit and catch your friend’s eye: Missed me.

At Flightdeck Simulation Center, aerial battles between friends take place on the ground. The screens of nine authentic military fighter-jet simulators broadcast the same views a pilot might see while soaring at 600 knots. Though the simulators remain on the ground, all the controls, radio orders, and UFO weigh stations mirror those encountered on an actual flight. People may come in with a friend or with a party, where guests and friends target one another during virtual missions, from the introductory Fox-1 experience to the three-hour Viper-1 course, which covers advanced topics such as missile avoidance. After team-building events, participants can even receive personalized dog tags as souvenirs.

Flightdeck Air Combat Center also has an exact replica of a Boeing 737-700 cockpit. Inside, a 180-degree wraparound screen transports pilots to airport runways from around the world. Commercial-flight drills present common challenges such as piloting through turbulence and wiping spilled coffee off the controls, testing visitors between their takeoff and landing.

The meaning of art may be subjective, but Mission: Renaissance Fine Art Classes believes that the basic, technical skills needed to create art are learnable, regardless of a student’s age or experience. The instructors at the studio, which was originally founded in 1975, illuminate the Gluck Method, which focuses on the classic rendering techniques that the great masters used on their first computers. The classes can accommodate students as young as 5, and they explore a number of different mediums—including charcoal, watercolors, and oils—while giving attendees the experience they need to appreciate art, as well as create it. Spread across 19 studio locations in southern California, attendance is capped at around six students per instructor, which allows them to offer artists more personalized feedback and more fitting nicknames.

For more than a decade, the kilns at Ocean Stained Glass have been firing and finishing glass pieces crafted by both veterans and first-timers. The stained glass play land leads classes that vary in content from fusing techniques and mosaic construction to the pure art of staining glass. It also encourages glassworkers to drop by during open-studio hours, thereby eliminating the need for budding artists to hurl paint buckets and cement blocks at the nearest storefront window. The studio’s resident artists craft custom designs as well, which vary in price based on the materials and complexity of a project.

Sunlight floods through the floor-to-ceiling windows of The Studio by Bridget, beaming across the sparkling canals of Long Beach to illuminate 1,900 square feet of space. Lined against the walls, Pilates equipment ranges from Reformers to more unusual gear used in private training, such as the ladder barrel and the stability chair, ideal for seated workouts that give students a more rigorous exercise than cranking a recliner footrest up and down. On this equipment—or on simple Pilates mats—the studio’s team hosts classes that lengthen and strengthen muscles, balancing physiques and enhancing flexibility through regimens involving stretching, breathing, resistance training, pulleys, and cables. The staff complements its Pilates offerings with spinning classes and TRX sessions, whose Reformer workouts were designed by a Navy SEAL.

“This is not your typical food-truck festival; this event will offer cutting-edge culinary flavors from chefs who want to take your palate on a journey you won't soon forget. You've got an unbelievable festival of haute cuisine you don’t want to miss." This is how PBS television host and founder of the event, Cliff Young, characterizes the mouth-watering event. More than 20 mobile and skilled chefs from southern California will be parking their mobile eateries inside San Manuel Stadium on April 22 to fill visitor's bellies with such culinary creations as oven-roasted turkey paninis, gooey house-made mac 'n' cheese with hickory-smoked bacon, and red velvet cupcakes as decadent as gold-plated helipads. A beer garden allows of-age visitors to complement savory tidbits with sips of ale. Not only does the event showcase the area's finest mobile-food mavens, but also a portion of the event's proceeds will go to The Symphonie Jeunesse Youth Orchestra for Strings.