With apologies for my somewhat silly previous question picking on the
wording of the Commercial aeronautical experience requirements, this one
really is a call for others' experience / opinion.

Saturday afternoon I met my new instructor; Plan A was to do the day and
night VFR duals back to back, and plan B was just to do the day. Due to the
interesting weather, we came up with this: Paine to Tacoma (repositioning
flight), start the clock and a new line in the logbook, Tacoma to Blaine
(103nm), back to Paine (2.2 hours from Tacoma to Paine).

Then I checked the regs again and it says "at least 2 hours...*consisting
of* a total straight-line distance of more than 100 nautical miles from the
original point of departure". This is significantly different from the more
detailed wording in the Private syllabus. Literally, it says you have to
consume the 2 hours traveling the 100 miles straight line, but in 2 hours I
traveled the 40nm from TIW to PAE.

Did anyone else do a 2-leg flight like that for the Commercial VFR, and was
it OK with the examiner?

[Interesting weather means that visibility was down to 5 miles in snow and
mist (the controller kept nagging me to report Tacoma in sight) although it
was mostly 10-15, I was cruising at 1200ft and once I went down to 700 to
get into class G and stay legal. We stayed close to beaches for pilotage and
landing sites, and hopped airport to airport using the GPS. We were about 0
degrees all the way and the only other GA plane on frequency, IFR, was
trying to get lower. I'm sure this is old hat to some more seasoned VFR
pilots, but it did give me new respect for the 3 miles minimum.]

-- David Brooks