New Record!

This morning, I had to fly my mom and my nephew, The Spud, back up to Michigan. I also had to pick up Proud Hillbilly there and bring her back. The plan was to fly up today and back on Saturday, but a check of the weather forecasts showed a strong possibility of no-flying weather for Saturday and Sunday over the Detroit-Cleveland area, so to make sure that we all wound up where we need to be on Monday morning, I made the whole round trip in one day, 8.2 hours of flying time over a track of roughly 700 miles and six airports landed at for food, gas, bathroom breaks and pax loading/unloading. And much of that time was spent over mountains (the Appalachians), over water (Lake Erie) and over, under or around various segments of controlled airspace (Pittsburgh, Akron, Cleveland, Detroit, etc.,) Fortunately I was blessed with good weather, to include a high-pressure system that came down out of Canada and made half of the upward flight and most all of the homeward flight just a dream, with unlimited visibility, no turbulence and a kicking tailwind coming home. I first turned the prop at 1000 hours to start the trip, and we just finished not long ago in the dark. This is the longest flight I've flown since the day I bought this plane and flew it home out of western Kentucky.

But damn, I feel great. Tired, but great.