Look Momma Duckie, no fighter jets!

Boring part of post:  took my last solo cross-country trip, as a student, out to Hanover (north of Richmond).  Nothing spectacular about the flight, just pure fun and pretty.  Everything was darn near perfect.  Tom took someone up for an aerial shoot as I was leaving, so I'm sure he had heart failure as he taxied behind me and watched my flip on that strobe light and take off.

Cool part of post: Tom and I ventured up to Class-S/Class-FJ zone!  Now there's Class A (high altitudes), Class B (Dulles)  Class C (Richmond)  Class D (Cville) and so on.  The letters stand for nothing.  Class-S, however, is a special class that only exists around DC, stands for Class-Stupid, because the protocols in the area, although important, are dumb.  Class-FJ encompasses the same space, but is heightened over areas such as the White House and Camp David, stands for Class-FighterJet because they use jets to make you not fly in those areas.
Since there's a 99% chance I'll fly up to the DC area one day, and I needed another hour in the plane with Tom there, I decided to persuade him to fly to Leesburg.  Normally Tom flies under Instrument Flight Rules, so this was his first of flying into the area under VFR.  Involved three flight plans, dodging Dulles and big planes, and wayy too many frequency changes.  We also got told to dodge the Class-B airspace of Dulles which made flying tedious.  Managed to get to Leesburg just fine after a lot of Tom going "this is stupid, they're making me angry" and me going "what on earth is going on".
Now, the return trip was somewhat humorous.  First, landing, I was supposed to get a certain squawk code to land in Leesburg.  Never did.  Taking off, Leesburg has a certain departure frequency listed, but that controller sent us to another who sent us to another and so forth.  Five changes later, we were nearly to Fredrick, MD when we were told to head to C'ville but stay clear of the Dulles airspace.
Long story short, as far as pilots like me goes, the FAA does not have their crap together with this airspace deal.  A course I took to be able to fly VFR into the airspace says one thing, controllers say to do another, then another controller says something else.  But, everything worked out, and I never saw a jet I wasn't supposed to see.  Did see a 747 fly over.
All in all, fun flight.  Kept me on my toes and other than all the frequency changes, it was pretty straightforward.  Although I am glad Tom was there to help out, I probably would have freaked with all of the changes and making sure I wasn't violating airspace rules.  Weirdest thing, by far, was being "home", but not actually being home.  I flew over landmarks I recognized and roads I could follow home, saw Tysons/Reston and all the way to DC, but being in the air, and in control, was definitely weird.

Returned to C'ville to watch a very loud Navy jet do touch-and-goes, too =D

Quote of the Day: "PLEASE DODGE THE JETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" - Momma Duckie in an email to me prior to flight =D