Final Day

I left Baton Rouge this morning with the intention of stopping at Lake Charles for lunch. I did not. One, it was a bit too early for lunch, but the real reason was the thunderstorm between me and the Lake Charles area. I was scud running from Baton Rouge to about halfway to Lake Charles when ATC cancelled my radar services because "they could not hand me off to Lake Charles approach." So, seeing the iffy scud ahead, and a hole in the broken layer, I shot up south above the clouds to 6500 ft. I could see the cell was small and would be able to circumnavigate it, but I had full tanks when I left KBTR (Baton Rouge) so decided to just head down to KGLS. KGLS is one of my favorite airports in Texas housing the Texas Air Museum and neighboring Moody Gardens not to mention always having "cheap" gas. ExxonMobile has a headquarters at the airport. The storm crap was located north of my route to Galveston, TX and the second leg to San Marcos, TX. After a quick "splash" of fuel for the plane and a splash of something else from me for..., I was off into Houston's class B and onto KHYI. Climbing out of KGLS, I was cleared through Class Bravo by a busy Houston controller on my way to 8500 which barley cut it for beating out the tops of the clouds. I must say this about Houston's controllers: I have always been treated the same as the big boys as long as I keep up the pace of communication (I do) which is not always the case with Class B controllers. Dallas always seems to have something more important to do as an example. Anyway, I am back at home after a very long trip.

Here are some statistics:

Total Logged Hours: 31.6
Total Landings: 16
States Overflown: 16 + DC + Ontario Province
Countries Overflown: 2
Estimated Distance Flown: 3075nm
Estimated Fuel Burned: 310 US Gallons of 100LL
Number of DC ADIZ Flights: 4
Number of Interceptions: 0