Day 8- eight days a week

Eight days a week- thank you the Beatles. The Last Leg. Homeward Bound. Marlys beat the alarm clock up- 6 am and we're moving. The taxi to the airport will be here at 7:30. We make it to breakfast in the motel lobby, fresh waffles too good to resist although neither one of us seems particularly hungry. Flight planning indicates that we will be on the ground in Ithaca in 2 hours and 27 minutes. I'll believe that when it happens but we are getting just a bit excited to get going. The taxi arrives early and we are on our way. Luck is with us- when we arrive at the FBO we find the fuel guy refueling a jet. This is good because he wasn't scheduled to start his day until 9 am and we must have fuel- he refuels us second. More good luck, the price of fuel at this airport has gone down twenty cents a gallon since last Sunday. The weather is hazy, once again a light wind right down the runway. Mornings are good to us. The forecast calls for a tailwind all the way to Ithaca. Minutes later we are up and away- headed right over Canada as a shortcut to NY. This means that we need a discrete code on the transponder to be in Canadian airspace, much like an IFR flight. 5,500' and absolutely smooth sailing. No less than 110 knots over the ground- sometimes as much as 120. Canadian ATC is great, the lake crossing uneventful. One hour and twenty five minutes after takeoff we are in NY airspace. Can this be true? We are exactly on time with our flight plan. Our good luck keeps rolling on. In spite of our good ground speed, time seems to drag. The Finger Lakes are a navigator's dream- so easy to see, to recognize to pinpoint your location by. I've got Keuka, there's Seneca, I think I see Milliken's smokestack. Thirty miles out from Ithaca we can hear the scenic flight tour pilots calling out Taughannock Falls- we radio the tower. It's Father's Day and that means the fly-in pancake breakfast at East Hill Flying Club. We had hoped to make the breakfast and now it's all going to work out perfectly. Lots of plane traffic, the tower is really working hard. We call out a 3 mile left base for 32 and get cleared to land. It's all so familiar now, I've made this landing hundreds of times before. Smooth and easy, roll out to Foxtrot, to the ramp with you tower. We taxi to the hangar, move the car, unload the plane, load the car. The plane's leading edges and the windshield finally get the cleaning they deserve. I call my Dad to wish him a happy father's day, Marlys calls her Mom to let her know that we have arrived. It's done. This great adventure is over- at least for now. What should we do next? Well those flyin' flapjacks look pretty good.....