Today Husband and I flew down to KUZA (Rock Hill, SC) to visit Husband's family for a long weekend. I flew (from the right seat) all but maybe 20 minutes or so of the three hour trip, and did the take-off (very well, too -- Husband was impressed! That was his first time flying with me since I started training). Husband did the landing since we had a pretty good crosswind and I haven't done any crosswind landings yet in my training. The trip took about half an hour longer than when he made the trip himself a few weeks ago on account of strong headwinds at most every altitude.
From AKQ to about RDU we were dodging big puffy clouds at ~4500'. It had an extremely unique and surreal beauty to it. After that, it was mostly a matter finding the least turbulent altitude, and there weren't many choices. Halfway down I was feeling a little queasy and headachey, so Husband took over for a little bit to let me relax, get some air and just focus straight ahead on the horizon.
The Dog (85-lb black lab) liked the trip, too. He spent most of the time napping on the floor in front of the back seat, except for the occasional pop-up of the head to get a treat.
I don't get to log any of that time :( but I did take advantage of the opportunity to practice things like maintaining altitude, quick corrections in response to turbulence, sight pictures, etc.
A note about altitudes: For VFR flying on the westerly side of the compass, target altitudes are even thousands plus 500' -- 4500, 6500, etc. We stayed at 4500' for a good portion of it, but when the turbulence started to get to me, we went down incrementally to 2500 in search of calmer skies. We were doing flight-following, too, and kept in the loop with various controllers along the way. VFR flying on the easterly side is odd thousands plus 500 (3500, 5500) and the even and odd thousands (not plus 500) are IFR altitudes -- or whatever the controllers tell the IFR travelers!
And shortly we'll head up to Charlotte for the Clemson game. Go tigers!
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