Today was the long cross-country, and I do mean *long*. Before we begin, John decides to introduce me to The Examiner. It appears that, in this reality, Darth Vader will take the form of a pleasant older gentleman who gives multi-engine instruction when he's not busy torturing instrument students. John introduces him to me, and I shake his hand and say that I'm glad to meet him. He replies by saying something about partial panel. I feel a strange disturbance in The Force in his presence but decide it was probably just the hot & spicy Thai chicken I had for dinner the night before.

I get a weather briefing for the trip to Montpelier and Orange and discover that winds aloft are forecast at 45 knots more or less directly off our nose for the first leg. Oh, well, we'll make it up on the way back. I file, we launch, and it begins to shape up as another day of getting the hell pounded out of us. I'd filed for 6000 ft, but we ask for 8000 in the hope of getting out of the turbulence. Out of curiosity, I ask Manchester Approach what our ground speed is. The controller reports its showing 30 knots. Then he adds "sorry to tell you this, but it just dropped to 20 - you know you could land in Concord and rent a car - it'd probably be faster!" John and I hold a quick pow-wow, and decide to change our destination to somewhere downwind - he chooses Portland, Maine. We go there, and on the way experience some *serious* downdrafts. Everyone on the frequency is experiencing the same thing, but in the Cherokee 140 it's *really* interesting. Imagine putting in full throttle, holding your best rate of climb, and descending at 700 fpm. As we were at 8000 feet, it was more an academic than panic issue, but one thing's for sure - I'm never going to try to take a Cherokee 140 over the Rockies. We do an ILS into Portland; I manage to hold it together until about 500 AGL where it falls apart. We park, and do some flight planning over a leisurely lunch.

Afterward, we depart Portland for Chatham, MA, to fulfill the no- tower and NDB requirements. I stumble on the first try, but manage to barely muck my way through the NDB approach the second time. Its still turbulent, and John suggests some ILSs at Nantucket, where it might be less bumpy. We go there and do one (its slightly better than the last), and land to talk about it. Its now about 5:30 pm, so we decide to have some dinner. The we launch, do two ILSs at Nantucket, and head back to Bedford. We get radar vectors nearly all the way to the VOR 23 approach. I stumble setting it up, but at least this time I'm bright enough to ask for another shot at it before it falls apart completely. Bedford is using 29 so I circle to land in the dark (its now about 9:30 PM) and make my first night landing in about six months. It isn't pretty. John points out that if I pass the exam but my landing gives the examiner a heart attack, he won't be able to sign me off. We park the airplane and John drops me off at the hotel. I'm dead tired, and keyboard this entry by convulsive finger spasms. I spent 7.1 hours under the hood today.