Back On Course

This morning by 8 I was checking weather and doing some flight planning, and by 9:20 I was out the door and on my way. The flight to Massachusetts was eerily easy. Cleveland let me fly right over the top of them, which may be a first. New York center gave me direct to my destination, which may also be a first. I only got one re-route other than the "direct to destination", and it was a simple thing that didn't even take me one degree out of my way. By now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and them to start harassing me and sending me all over the place, but it never happened. The fog and overcast ceilings that were at my destination when I left were gone by the time I got there, and all in all it was a quite unnaturally nice flight out east.

That reminds me. I am really grateful for the equipment available today. You don't know how many times in the "old" days we would take trips and the weather would be nothing like it was forecasted to be, taking you from a happy-go-lucky flight to a surprise approach at minimums at the end. Or how many trips you weren't sure you could (or should) take because it was below minimums when you left, was supposed to get better, but you never knew if it DID get better or not until you got there and got to see for yourself, and sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't so much. These days I can check the weather all the way there, see the trends, watch what it's doing, and have no surprises when I get there. Nathan has better equipment in the Baron than most professional including airline pilots get on their planes. It's nice.

The trip home was more typical. They didn't like what I filed out (which was the same as what I filed in) so changed it around enough that I had to sit on the ground for a few minutes with paper maps out and figure out where all they wanted me to go. :) Cleveland wouldn't let me inside their airspace on the way home, I got a few re-routes and such, but nothing exciting. I got about an hour of IMC in, 8 hours total flight time, four each direction (for the logbook).

Steve and Kaylee had a good day today. He had one Discovery Flight, and Kaylee drove him to and from the airplane with the golf cart. She was quite careful, parked it, drove it appropriately, and did a very nice job. They also had a "car wash" back at the house, and that was her idea. They washed up the Corvette and drove it around, washed the Jeep, and Grandma & Grandpa's car too. When I pulled into the driveway, I didn't have the car shut off before she was rocketing out of the house to get a hug. :)

This is the week prior to our BBQ Bash, so things are going to get pretty crazy I'm guessing...