The weather, airplane schedule, and timing worked out so that I could fly the airplane up to attend my nieces confirmation service. Erica had a long week, and was still pretty congested from allergy stuff, so I made the trip solo. That also presented the opportunity for me to delay my return long enough so that I would be arriving near home after dark and could do my required landings to be current for carrying passengers at night.
On the flight up, I had originally planned for good winds up at 5,500′, but in flight there was enough cumulous at ~4,500 that I elected to stay down at 4,000′. Once I got handed over to St. Louis approach, the controller immediately cleared me into the bravo, which gave me some options to avoid descending early to get under the bravo like I was used to from years ago. I also got cleared directly over the top of Spirit of St. Louis. There was a jet departing underneath me, which kept me above 3,500′ until over spirit. That meant I had an expedited descent to get to Creve Couer’s pattern altitude by the time I got there. All worked out great, and dad was pulling into the parking lot by the time I had shut down.
This was my first time flying N2613L at night, so before departing I made sure I had all my flashlights arranged, assuming that none of the lights on the aircraft would work. While the airplane doesn’t have instrument lighting, it does have a post light that worked just fine. I had a red headlamp that helped a lot for tuning radios, etc. I will need to get the red post light addressed.