This morning was full of great feelings. No, not that 'too many burritos' feeling that I had the morning of my check ride. It was a... a... a feeling of just the right amount of cherry pie. A brilliant feeling. Checked the convective outlook to see what NOAA was forecasting. Once more, a day full of pop-up thunderstorms were in order. Nothing surprising there.
     Stopped by my eye doctor to pick up my lenses for my glasses. I am the king of destroying lenses. Micro scratches to the MAX. Any way, I picked those up and headed down the road to New River Valley Airport. I got to the airport around 9:30 where I had to wait on the fog/clouds to lift.

 

       My aircraft was fueled up, so I departed for Roanoke around 10:30. Had to climb to 5,500 ft due to low broken clouds.

        My approach into Roanoke is the post before this one. I sped it up to save you from boredom. Landing was... Firm? Eeeek! First landing of the day. (Not a very good excuse!)


     Katy was very sweet to take me out to lunch while the desk crew at Landmark Aviation looked for an extra headset that I could borrow!

     I had a Club Sandwich from Pete's Deli, which was amazing! We then meandered our way back to Landmark and departed for MKJ (Mountain Empire)

        *After this point, I had a passenger to entertain, therefore I didn't get much (practically ANY) footage or videos.*


     We flew over the town of Wytheville on our way and flew over my grandparent's house just to say 'Hi'! Then  we began our descent into Mountain Empire where I greased it onto the runway! 'Not bad for the Guinea pig flight!'

Greg Biffle, his pilot, and his C210 were there. ... or so I was told! Due to impending thunderstorms we made a quick pee & drink stop and turned right back around. There was lighting distant to the west. This wasn't what I was really worried about, I was concerned about the pop-ups that move in mid afternoon. We dodged one thunderstorm over Wytheville on our way back and then had this to contend with...
   

     Rain! To the North & North-East moving where you ask? Directly over Roanoke of course! Obviously I was to busy trying to get this plane on the ground before this wall of rain met us. 'Clash of the Titans' is a much more interesting movie than 'Clash of the Cessna 172 and the Wall of  Impending Rain' would ever be. Though... The budget wouldn't be as high...

Touchdown. Heavy rain. Poor line man!

     ... And just as quickly as it came, it left. Kind of! Katy and I said our goodbyes and I waited out the storm until I found a golden opportunity.

     But not before the television goes out!

     I depart for PSK and have a nice, uneventful flight home! Roanoke's Controller services were quite nice to put up with me on four separate occasions today!

     I logged 3.4 hours today. It was worth every penny... and a cookie!