The nearest place available was at Hillsboro Airport which is not very far from Beaverton. Unfortunately, I didn't arrange to go for a checkout until the start of my last week there (but then, I was having a great time with my sister and her family doing lots of trips places and shopping and stuff).

I called the nice people at Eagle Flight Center(sic) and arranged a time to go up with an instructor on the Tuesday. They are at (7) on the following map (from the above Hillsboro Airport website):

I arrived at the airfield with a couple of hours to spare as I needed to sort out my license with the FAA office there. They have an office off NW 25th Ave near (6) on the above map and this meant walking round Cornell and then along 25th to get there 9about 15-20 mins!).

At the FAA office, I filled out a form with the various details from my JAA licence and some info about my total hours to date and a very nice man named Roger Phillips checked the details and a temporary FAA licence was printed out for me. A full version will get sent home around 30-60 days later).

Back at the Flight Center, I went up for my check flight with Richard Drilling for just under an hour. We flew a short way to the West and practiced a few stall recoveries, slow flight, engine failure, etc, then headed back to the airfield for a touch-and-go, a go-around and then a full stop landing.

Back in the office, I filled in an open-book quiz about various things from the various V speeds and performance info for the C172, local airfield procedures, and a few bits on US Air Law and was then pronounced good to fly on my own.

A friend of mine (from when I used to be a sys admin at Oxford a number of years ago) lives with his girlfriend not very far from my sister and he picked me up to go for a meal. They were very keen to go for a flight and so we booked the plane for 3 hours the next day.