Woke up at 9:15 A.M.

I was able to add another endorsement to my logbook today!  Jesse flew a man down to Oklahoma to pick up his airplane, and in exchange for the flight, the man offered to let us fly it to get our High-Performance ratings.

So today I flew a 1959 Cessna 182.  It's used as a missions plane up in Alaska, so it's been around the block a few times!  But it was rather powerful.  How powerful?  Well, it had 235-horsepower!

Let me put that into perspective.  The Cessna 152 I flew for years had a 110-horsepower engine.  And the Piper Cherokee I fly now has a 160-horsepower engine.  So this one had quite a bit more power.

And it had an adjustable propeller, too.  So that was different.

But I flew it, and I now have a high-performance endorsement.  Pretty sweet.

This afternoon, I showed four fifth-graders around the airport.  They came out as part of an after-school program, so I showed 'em everything from how we get weather all the way to the insides of the airplanes.  Kinda fun, and I think they enjoyed it, too.

After that, I went out chasin' some storms.  Some pretty sweet clouds in the area.  Most were covered up by rain, so I drove out east to stay ahead of 'em.  At one point, I had that crazy nervous feeling as I saw the beginnings of a funnel cloud about a mile ahead of me.  The base was risin' and spinnin' all at the same time.  The cloud was formin' right before my very eyes.  Freaked me out.  But it later dissipated.

I was stayin' ahead of a storm movin' to the northeast at 25 mph.  Yet the funny thing was the incredibly strong movement of clouds going directly south.  Low and fast.  Lots of lightning and lots of rain on the back-side.

Ended up with some sweet pictures, a whole lot of water, and some hail.

Spent the evening inside.

Went to bed at 1:00 A.M.