A long time coming...

Did my first cross country yesterday. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to take the picture I promised. I'm not feeling very verbose tonight.. but there are a few notes to make.

1. Flight planning works amazingly well. Flew the flight as planned on the way to the destination and the heading, timing, checkpoints... it all worked. Ended up landing only 2 minutes later than I had planned. Just amazing. Scott was right, of course.
   
2. Bad checkpoints are hard to find, but fun if you have someone with you that knows what the hell he's doing. We didn't find the checkpoint we thought would be easy to find, but lucked out on the tower and found the buildings, ranches and race tracks that we figured would the hardest to find basically by knowing what the big picture should be and comparing that to what it was.
   
3. Northern California's hills are absolutely beautiful in the winter... the most gorgeous emerald green from the sky. And there are little hidden valleys with lakes and even landing strips. Ranches with cows looking like black dots on bright green pillows.
   

I'd been waiting for that flight for a very long time, a very very long time. I'm not going to say where I flew, it really doesn't matter. What mattered was the journey. Life's like that sometimes, the journey means more than the destination.