The aviation community is so small, it never seizes to amaze me. When I was an instructor in Lincoln Park, New Jersey I met a student of the school there who was on the very fast track to accumulating many licenses/ratings (many more than I have now). SS and I became friends and would fly around whenever schedules would permit from NJ, to FL and even building some multi-engine time in CA. To quickly get to this entry, he recently married his girlfriend and moved out to CA! 
He wanted some help flying his plane back from a summer in NY and asked if I could help him fly it back from PWK (just north of ORD) back to SQL. Hubby was able to move his work around so I could do this trip of a life time. It has always been a dream of mine to do a flight cross country and this was way more than 50 miles.
The lessons I learned on this flight are many.
1) having someone to share responsibilities makes it much much easier especially when flying IFR in unfamiliar territory.
2) understanding weather and getting frequent updates on the ground AND in the air with 122.0 is a necessary task
3) be flexible as weather, airplane and personal needs are changing
4)This is an amazing country to see both on the ground and in the air (my personal favorite)
5) I NEVER get sick of this stuff!!!
