just about done

I guess its been close to a week since my last post. Alot has happened. Flew home last Friday on an Airtran 717. Not a bad jet, and the arrival into Reagan-national was pretty interesting. One of my best friends got married over the weekend, so that was the occasion. We all had a blast and it was great to see everyone in one place.
Got back to Ft Pierce Sunday night pretty late. I had about 8 hours left to fly in 3 days. So I relaxed on Monday. Yesterday I hit the airways again. Tropical storm Alberto was kickin pretty hard. I had wanted some actual instrument weather so took advantage of his wrath to go fly. Antoine, the Frenchman, and I boarded the Duchess for what was supposed to be a round robin.....Jacksonville-cecil field, then on to Cross city, then back to Ft pierce. As we neared Jax-cecil we asked Jax approach control for the vor approach to runway 9. He said weather was VFR, then changed that comment with "cecil field is reporting 1 mile, heavy to extreme weather, right over the field". I tried to get holding but he opted to vector us out west and then back into the field. We saw the airport as it emerged from the torrential rain showers. We asked for a visual approach and he informed us that we needed to do an approach since it was still reported IFR. This was probably my one and only chance to request a contact approach. I was about to until he came back saying he talked to the tower and it was VFR....hmmmm...I couldve told him that. Anyways, a contact approach is when a pilot is in pseudo ifr and can remain clear of clouds and reasonably navigate to the airport. Something I learned alot about on my CFII checkride. Usually happens when a pilot is in low vis but is familiar enough with the airport and terrain to make it safely to the runway. Anyways, there was some pretty severe weather moving northeast so we opted to make a beeline back to FT pierce. We hit some pretty decent weather over Daytona and Malbourne. Vis in Vero and Ft pierce was down to about 4 miles in haze so we flew the VOR14 approach at FPR. not a bad flight. The evening flight was to Tamiami. A nice airport south of Miami. Smooth air, decent vis. We were on radar vectors the whole way. Not a bad way to navigate. Makes it easy. The leg home was mine and as we cruised at 6k west of Miami I enjoyed a pretty wild sunset....a bright pink sky...and a sliver of sun between two layers of clouds that lingered over the middle of the state towards Tampa. Its been a blast down here. Time has flown by, but I managed to log 95 hours of twin time, and sit at 715 total time and 105 multi. not too bad.
Its back to work on Saturday. Got some students lined up for the week. Have a couple new ones starting up. Get to use my new ratings too...CFII and MEI.

The summer should be a good one. The airlines are definitely within my grasp. Exciting Stuff.