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As part of my transition to N99387, I've been enjoying night flights. So as the dusk started dusking I cut out of work with no particular plan in mind. I resisted the urge to go chase Marty's flaming balloon ( http://www.njballoon.com/ ) as it departed: having a vintage aircraft circle a few times improves the tips, so they say. Marty is a V35 pilot. He trusts some of us to put on a little airshow for his clients. I've ballooned with him. Delightful. Instead, I headed north over the Poconos to N30, Cherry Ridge, in PA. No lights there, but I made it at dusk. A family of white-tail deer were good enough to stand next to, not on, the unlighted runway. Thanks, Lynn, for those two landing lights. Thanks, Greg, for putting the quartz bulbs in them :-) This place has lights, but they don't work. It's getting dark. Enter on upwind, don't waste time, it's getting darker by the minute in the mountains. 110 IAS down upwind, 110 IAS crosswind, 110 IAS downwind, 100 IAS on base, make it tight, dump the speed on final, and get down while depth perception still works right. Geez, sometimes you just have to love these Ercoupes, where you fly the whole pattern at cruise and slow down at the last moment. Gee, I wish Lynn could see me flying N99387 now. I was such a dolt when I flew it on the demos down in Orlando, as she's very different than 06H. But now, we've come to an understanding, and '387 does just what I ask her to. We're in love. The restrooms were locked, so I had to take my cross-country leak behind a blue spruce. As I emerged the local shop owner asked 'can we help you with anything?' That must have been the 'hey Coupe' I heard on 122.8 as I taxied. This guy wanted a gam. Explains why he was leaving the airport, and turned around when he saw the twin tails arrive just as the runway faded from view. Of course he was a bit concerned, figgering I might have arrived with a problem. I had thought about that in passing, as a 'what if?' Turns out that here was a guy who would have hung out until midnight to get me home. Eighty if he was a day. After being assured all was well, he allowed as though he had the dowdy red 'Coupe based on the field in for annual. I invited him out to ogle N99387, and he was suitably impressed by the Y2K interior in a 1946 airframe. I said three 'Hail Marys' and one 'Our Father' in the hopes that those deer weren't over the hump on the runway, and lifted off in ground-effect to be above antlers in case they were. Soft-field, deer-field, same thing. Called Wilkes-Barre approach for flight following as the last of the twilight turned to dark over the Poconos, out of 2500 for 5500. They did a hand-off and I was asked what kind of 'Commander' I was. I explained I was an Ercoupe, 'E-R-C-O' and was thanked for the by-the-book clarification. Young whipper-snappers! Sounded like a sweet young thing though. Heard worries as an 'unknown' approached the 'no fly' around a nuke plant. Guess that NOTAM came to be. 'Can you see him?' she asked another flight-following customer. Damned day-late-and-a-dollar-short feds. The 90MPH on the way up turned into 130MPH on the way home. Wind CAN be your friend! This was a friendly wind, as it made speed but it didn't make any bumps. Even over the mountains. They didn't have a single bit of traffic to tell me about until they gave up on me at Stroudsburg, PA. They suggested maybe Allentown approach. I figgered I'd make it on my own from there, and headed down to 3500 to be well below the bizjets to Allentown at 5000' and the 767s to EWR at 7000'. Oh, well. At least if Connie Continental gave up over the Poconos, they'd be able to graph the trajectory to find the corpse. Wow, but the countryside of New Jersey has a lot of lights. I guess we're determined to f*** it up and turn it all into Secaucus. The Lowrance showed the way. VFR at night might as will be IFR. There are no real land-marks, at least not any that aren't more confusing than not. Quick note of the DG, just one notch of South, to get me home if the Lowrance quits. There's a GPS III in the baggage box anyway. And a VOR in the panel. And 2.5 hours of gas in the tanks. We'll sort it out, one way or another. Then the WalMart parking lot says we're five miles out on the '45. Sure looks different from this angle. I've never seen it from the North at night. But there go the HIRL and the strobes at the end of the runway. Kill the GPS light. It ruins the night-vision. Arrived a bit high, but who cares, close the throttle. Better that than low. HIRL so bright I near forgot the landing lights, but hit them on final. Just as I flared I was surprised to find a nice, soft bit of asphalt there. The accidental greaser. No, I'm really that good. So I tell myself. Bull. Just because the last four were that way at night. But this one, I didn't expect. That's the difference. This one WAS an accident. It could have sucked. Next time, try to KNOW that it will be right. Lazy bastard, move those eyes, use the periphery. That's why god gave you a flexible neck. Getting it right by chance is unacceptable. Not with night landings. A 'B' is a failing grade here. At the pumps was a 172 with a greybeard CFI and his European lady student, one of N99387's admirers. N99387 is like that: people just want to be close to the plane for a little while. She's sharp on aerodynamics, and wanted an explanation of how the Ercoupe works. So we talked differential ailerons, adverse yaw, engine offset, P-factor, and H-tails for a half-hour or more. What a perceptive young woman. The CFI said 'the student is now putting the instructor to shame. What insightful questions!' He was really excited by her grasp of the aerodyamic implications of 2-control flight! Looks like the CFI-student relationship I saw 90 days ago is turning into a romance, too. 8 gallons for 134-odd miles is not too bad on a windy day. Probably could have leaned a bit more, though. The cold weather (32F at 5000 feet) made the engine run happily smooth at a rather high 1850F EGT, but I wasn't that comfortable with the idea in the dark over the mountains. Not at a hurry-along 2600RPM. Call the wife. I'm down and safe. She worries when I fly at night. Talks of life insurance. But she knows that flying is my LIFE! insurance. I might just get the hang of this thing. Only one regret. I really should have crashed Marty's post-balloon bash with his clients. Coulda had a slurp of Champagne. I deserved i Instead, I ran back to the office. That vibrating cell-phone signaled an emergency at work. Reality. Yuck. The Yankees were playing the Diamondbacks, and the TFRs were in force like a new-age Iron Curtain. GA was again taking it up the you-know-what as 86 public-use airports and a total of 490-odd landing sites were arbitrarily shut down by a Fed which can't be bothered to provide a secure alternative to 'shut GA down but let commercials who pose a real threat fly anyway.' 7th inning stretch. Listen to that line cop singing 'God Bless America.' Operatic tenor. And he's an NYPD cop with that kind of talent? This is why the rest of us amateur musicians keep our day jobs. 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