Fantastic Weather

Last Sunday was one of those beautiful days that makes a pilot want to take to the sky. Our plane finally (hopefully!) fixed, we had flown to CXY to visit some friends for the night. We've actually been trying to connect the dots to go for a few months now. Some other friends drove down with their kids from Delaware to join the fun as well, so we had a little house party!

On the way to Cap City, I flew and Husband navigated. It had been two weeks since my last flight-- and I had only been flying about once a week for a few weeks before that. Add to that forgetting to get a snack and a full day of activity beforehand, and I was feeling a bit disoriented. I actually had to USE the checklist to remember everything (and not just doublecheck that I did stuff)... but Husband's help, we finally got off the ground and in the air. It took me a few minutes to relax and be able to enjoy being in the sky again... but then it was great! How easily we forget the joys of flying. The flight was over way too soon-- but it was great to see our friends. The ones we were visiting have had twins since we last saw them-- so they now have 3 boys under the age of 2! Talk about craziness!

Sunday, as I said before was gorgeous. The other husbands were going golfing-- but as others had the plane reserved at noon, Husband couldn't join in the fun, so instead we decided to do a bit of flight-seeing before heading back. We flew down the river (not sure what river) from Cap City to 0W3. We originally thought we might land there, but then discovered that though there were 3 runways, they were all 2000' or less and two were turf! So, we quickly scrapped that plan. Somehow, even though we did not request it, we ended up with flight following (the second time that's happened lately). It was nice to have a little extra assurance that we weren't going to have a mid-air... but also a little limiting for really being able to be relaxed. We finally were "cleared" to change frequency at OW3, and then took it on our own from there. (We had an interesting discussion on how we would have asked to be released from flight following-- since we had never requested it-- something to ask A next time we have a lesson.)

Though the skies were clear and beautiful over JYO, there were scattered clouds over OW3. We had gone above them thinking that we'd then just around or through the get down for the approach over OW3 (we weren't landing-- but figured we'd at least overfly the airport). They definitely made for an interesting descent as we had to zigzag our way through. We then discovered they went a lot lower than anticipated, and it was even more interesting zigzagging our way back up when we headed back towards JYO. I think we'll give a little wider berth to clouds in the future!