Day 15: Richmond, VA (Guest Blogger - Matthew Cusack)

Day 15: June 14th. So today was the first day I had the privilege of joining Joel on this most excellent adventure. I know there are others who would be here in a minute if they could, Ed comes to mind. We ended up with perfect timing, both arriving at BWI on the parallel runways at the same time! He was lucky to get some good help and get right over to the passenger terminal and they pulled up just as I was walking out. Some times the timing just works. So we met up at BWI and flew the leg from Baltimore, MD to Richmond, VA. What a trip. It was the afternoon and anyone who lives in this part of the country knows, the weather is pot luck mid-afternoon. Well, we must have gone to the right Church on this Sunday morning because we were able to avoid most of the clouds and turbulence. On the commercial flight down, we weren't so lucky, but I wasn't flying, so I sat back and enjoyed it.

We took off on runway 33R from BWI and were vectored towards Baltimore until we could gain altitude. This was the interesting part as there had been multiple advisories about the pockets of turbulence, and earlier that morning it seemed to be over the water. Here we were headed in the wrong direction and over the water. Our luck changed when we spotted the USAirways or Delta white jet coming in that we were being vectored around and we were turned on course after that. It got better too. As we cleared the Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) around metro-DC, we were given increasingly direct vectors to Hanover County Airport outside of Richmond, VA. It was a perfect day to fly over the MD coast from the Inner Harbor all the way down past Pax River and over the Chesapeake Bay. There were scattered clouds at about 6,000 ft, and otherwise visibility up to about 50 mi. It was hard because the weather was so good, but we were eventually able to "find" some brief actual IMC, just after crossing the Chesapeake Bay.

Anyone who has flown with Joel says the same thing, a great pilot, a natural pilot. He managed it effortlessly. As the right-seater, I took advantage of the time once we reached altitude to spend the first part of the flight re-learning how to read the IFR charts. It was great. I was splitting my time on the VOR's and IFR charts, and looking outside. Then I got to fly the last part of the journey and set us up for a smooth handoff to the pro for a perfect "butter" landing at Hanover. The best part was - Dennis, Connor, Keira, and Liam were there to greet us! They came out, big smiles, crawled around the plane, and asked lots of questions. We even took some pictures.

We went to the store to gather supplies an then had a great dinner. Amy had us set-up in no time. She is a saint, that's all I can say. She kept us and her four kids in sync in spite of the fact there were a million things going on.

Then back to the store for the S'mores supplies we missed. We made s'mores till we could not eat anymore. We all had a blast!!! We had a few cocktails by the fire and laughed until the wee hours of the night. It was a fantastic kick-off to our travels together.

- Matthew Cusack