March 20 2010 Our plan was to fly from KPIE to KBOW today for lunch and to get some cheap Avgas, cheap being $3.70.  As car gas is going for $2.75 these days that's not a bad price for the highbrow stuff.  Anyway we met a couple of friends Sam and Paul at the home drome that were looking to commit aviation and invited them to come along.   They fly a Lightning aircraft from HERE.   We weren't sure if they'd make it or not.  Called ground and got assigned RWY 35R and a clearance over Tampa at 2500 feet.  Now I've done this a hundred times but this time they ran us way North around Tampa instead of over the top.  Was great fun flying in front of all those airliners heading for Tampa RWY 18, basically I was told to fly right through their path.  Who's to question the controller gods but I did get to see some real pretty airliners close up.  As we were head on to the side of the airliners I bet the passengers never saw me, probably didn't even wonder why they were swerving around so much on final...  I bet the airliner pilots never saw me either except on thier fancy TCAS stuff. The buds behind me in the Lightning were given the same flight path but told to stay at 1600'.  Guess the controllers have a learning curve. Near Bartow we had to do some fancy flying to avoid some big black birds and some less than fancy flying to avoid a flock of tiny little birds.  Those little ones were too small to see and avoid but I managed not to hit any due to dumb luck.  The wind was from the left and fairly gusty so my landing was less than a squeaker but I didn't bust anything.  Taxied to the gas pump for some go juice. Click any of the below pictures for a full size picture. You can see the restaurant/FBO off in that Red Roof building.  So we wandered over that way.  The inside is pretty nice and the whole facility is awesome. We ordered our Cuban Sandwich and onion rings and wondered if our buddies would show.  Finally we see they have arrived.  I think they were either saving gas or ran out as they were pulling the plane down the ramp. At least they worked up an appetite for lunch. Bartow was a WWII airbase and has a small Museum there, well done Bartow! We had a nice lunch, poked around the museum and decided to head back.  Just for grins we flew back over Lake Parker arrival to the Lakeland airshow that is coming up next month.  I really miss that old orange ball reporting point.  It was a little hazzy but a nice 75F but pretty bumpy.  We've got the Jet stream way down south and it's been making it windier than normal.  Got to KPIE and got told to follow this Cherokee doing all of 75 knots.  Plus that he must have been a foreign student due to his accent and the 5 mile patterns he was doing.  He had me so far away from the airport at 88K that if my engine quit we'd a been going for a swim for sure.  On short final it was getting more and more obvious that I was going to be doing a go around so I asked for a left 360.  Low, slo and going around... Good slow flight practice tho.  As I finished my 360 and lined up with Rwy 22 the Cherokee was still on the runway!  As I touched down he had just pulled off.  That 360 which seemed like it took a long time was just barely enough.  He taxied back for another take off so he could try that again with the next arrival.  I taxied to the hangar having completed the mission again today. Stay tuned for further episodes of  the little Q plane.