Listen to Aaron when he say “Meet me at KRMY for lunch”
I wasn’t doing anything then, and while I should have been stacking wood, that could wait…… It was about as VFR a day as one could ask for….
So I did…
The flight out was scattered clouds from about 4000 to about 8000 so I climbed through a break and flew out at 9500 feet to remain VFR. Since it was a low flight, I didn’t use all the power I had, and flew instead at 180 knots….rather than waste a bunch of fuel fighting thicker air for an additional 25 knots. I hand flew rather than using the autopilot (which showed I need to hand fly more often) just for practice.

The descent was normal, if a bit rough coming through the scattered cloud layer, but soon enough I was below the layer looking for the field. Brooks field is surprisingly hard to find, even with the GPS pointing right to where it is. Just for some reason hard to visually pick out of the surroundings. I was less than 6 miles away before I found the field.
But, with GPS guiding me, I had already made my 10 mile position call and was set up for a downwind entry behind a 172. Did a bit of an extended downwind for spacing for the slower plane , base, final, and landed.

Aaron was waiting at Brooks Field when I got there and he took me to Schulers in Marshall Michigan. (They will pick you up at the airport!) So we called for a ride and they did….
We entered and got a table….
Where we ate our way through an excellent chunk of Prime Rib…..

Followed by some really good dessert (which I failed to get a photo of)…I had the hedonistically rich Brownie with ice cream and he had the Peach Cobbler.
He even bought lunch…!
We talked chatted and laughed, then it was time to go. Shuttle back to the airport, a quick perusal of the weather….I decided to fly VFR again.
A quick check of the oil and other basic preflight items and we started the engines on our respective aircraft and Aaron taxiied out followed by me a few minutes later.
A short runup, and soon I was climbing up to 8500. I called Great Lakes approach for VFR Flight Following and they gave me a squawk, and told me VFR my discretion below 10,000 ft and I flew towards home.
Clouds were about the same as the flight out, but a bit less and a bit lower (else I might have had to request a climb to 10,500 or filed IFR)

Great Lakes Approach changed channels on me once I was level and a bit farther west then passed me to South Bend….Who then passed me onto Chicago Approach as I descended and arrived at my home airport.
Winds were listed as “variable at 5” 15 miles out for my runway, so I chose a straight in approach…then suddenly I realized I was putting in a fair bit of wind correction, so I checked the weather again and it was now “12 gusting 18” …and almost a direct crosswind…
I should have just applied power, aborted the approach, gone around, and chosen the other runway, but I decided to do a crosswind landing (I am stubborn sometimes) …which was ok, speed over the numbers 85 instead of 75 for the gusts…and then the wind went to NOTHING and I dropped like a stone…then added power just as the wind came back…so I floated a fair distance and then “Plonked” it down. Missed the first turnoff, but made the second one and taxiied back to the hangar.
Man, that is a good way to spend an afternoon.