The odyssey... 2:36 PM EDT on Sunday May 19th I departed Cleveland (CLE) on American Eagle. After a reasonably short stop in Chicago, a second flight deposited me in Duluth (DLH). On that second leg I met an SR20 owner, Stephan Hadley, based at DLH. Steve kindly drove me to the Cirrus facility for a look-see at the closed building and then dropped me off at my motel, The Fairfield Inn. At 8:00 Monday morning, the ACAR car rental folks picked me up at the motel and after some paperwork I drove to Cirrus.

Then Murphy's Law kicked in, my plane was not quite ready for delivery. Oh well. While waiting for the plane my instructor, Shawn Martinek, and I did ground school.

Monday afternoon we inspected the plane and did an inspection flight. It is one very capable aircraft! There were some squawks and training would alternate with shop time.

On the acceptance and first training flights a new-to-Cirrus instructor, Sandy, rode along in the back seat. I handed her my camera and asked her to shoot away... So she shot me.

On the next-to-last day Shawn really worked me out with some 20 landings in miserable strong and gusty winds. Just to add to the fun we used no-flaps, half-flaps, and full-flaps. Arghhh...

I sort of got even by making him pose for photographs just after we stopped for the day. Look at what the wind is doing to his pants!