It has been a few months (three, actually) since I've posted anything here. Poor weather, plus the runway resurfacing that kept the airport closed for the better part of November meant I didn't get much flying in for that entire month.

I did take one of my buddies up about a week after my flight review to Copperhill, TN (1A3) and Andrews-Murphy (RHP), which also was the first cross country time I had logged in quite a while. It turned out being a very nice flight weather wise and the leaves were just shy of peak color, which made for an absolutely beautiful flight. It was also my first flight in one of the older 172Ps that they have on the line, N54448.

Once the airport opened up again in early December, I made a rather long cross country flight to Chattanooga (CHA) and Huntsville (HSV) to give the new-to-me Garmin 195 GPS a run in 54448. I picked it up for $100 off of Craigslist. According to the gentelman I bought it off of, he used it twice since purchasing it in 2001, so it is basically a brand new unit. Most of the accessories were still sealed in their original packaging. Talk about a deal! While at Chattanooga, one of the ladies who was nice enough to give my wife and I a tour of the tower back in July was working local control. She was a bit surprised that I remembered who she was, I told her of my selection for Memphis Center, for which she congratulated me before giving me my clearance out of the class C airspace there.

Over Christmas and the holidays I wasn't able to get much in for obvious reasons. I did have one flight scheduled, but had to cancel because of low celings. It was the day of Superior's annual Turkey Fry, and to my wife and I's surprise, Alton Brown of Great Eats was the one frying the turkeys! I did not know this before, but he lives in the Atlanta area and takes flying lessons at Superior. He owns a new or nearly new Cessna 206 that I have seen out on the ramp a few times and is currently working on his instrument rating.

My last flight of 2009 ironically fell on the same date as my last flight of 2002, December 29th, the flight that ended up being my last for five and a half years. I made a rather brief flight over to the new Paulding County Regional Airport (PUJ) and did a few touch and goes, then made the short hop over to Cedartown (4A4) to log a couple of more airports in 54448. I made that flight in anticipation of my next step...finishing my instrument rating.