Trying to Get to Osh!

The best laid plans of pilots and airplanes... All week long I've been looking forward to Oshkosh. I guess I've been 5 or so times by now, and this year I'm even staying for the whole week instead of just a few days. One of the things that I'm particularly looking forward to is that we're staying in a motorhome right in the middle of things at Osh. I've never done the motorhome thing before, but I've always been somewhat intrigued by the idea of going "RV'ing" in the land yacht variety of RV.
I digress. Abby and I are trying to get to Oshkosh. Today is the day. Our plans were simple, and the weather forecast was looking good. I got up at 4:30am, threw Abby and luggage in the car, and we were off to the airport. By 6:30am, we were airborn, with a beautiful sunrise greeting us from the wide open view of my RV7 tip-up canopy. A perfect flying moment, and the only thing missing was my camera, buried deep in my pile of luggage. That'll have to be one for only Abby and me to remember. We were off to a great start.
Two things, however, were working against us. First, it was all headwinds, with as much as 20-30 knots off the nose. Second, there was a line of thunderstorms coming down through Indiana. There wasn't much we could do about the headwinds, but the RV is fast so my 140kt ground speed is not the worst thing in the world. We still made time. The thunderstorm line decided to play nice. There was an eastern line and a western line of the front, with a nice break in between. Thankfully, the break was nearly along my flight path. With a small amount of detouring, we set course right between the two fronts. This might sound iffy to read this, but we were flying at 12500 feet. We have weather in the cockpit, and we're able to see everything ahead of us for 100 miles. If radar and reality had not been in our favor, we had many airport options below me.
The timing of my plan today didn't leave much room for error thanks to the headwinds. I wanted to land at Oshkosh by 11:00 so that we could catch a noon bus back to Milwaukee to pick up our motorhome. We also needed to fly miserly so that we'd have sufficient fuel range and reserve. The plan was working, but the time was getting tight. Speaking of miserly, my airplane holds 42 gallons of gas, and I'd always considered that this was a 3 hour airplane with an hour reserve. Wrong. Going high and leaning out the mixture makes an unbelievable difference. We had fuel burn down to 7 gallons, and suddenly we had a nearly a 5 hour range plus reserve. My fuel computers were showing that I had enough to get to Osh plus 45 minutes. That's right at my limit, but there was also the possibility that we'd pick up ground speed considerably as we got closer to Osh. It would be something to monitor.
Nexrad showed two lines of storms, one behind the other. It was looking easy to fly over them. We had climbed to 16500', and we could see over the second line. Wait a minute. My O2 tank is getting low. Dangit. We're not going over the front. We quickly descended to 12500 and that wasn't enough for the clouds ahead. The front ahead was now shaping to be a giant pile of IMC (instrument meteorlogical conditions) at least at these altitudes altitude. I realized that I was looking at the last open patches of ground down below. My hopes of a direct flight to Osh just evaporated, but there's still plenty of day ahead of me. Abby and I went down lower and lower. The ceilings over Indiana were at around 3600 feet. That's still a safe VFR altitude, and I know that on the other side of this, it's wide open. Ironically, we've made it past everything that shows up on the NexRad, and it's just when I think we're getting along great that the weather actually got interesting. Low level overcast layers don't show up on radar.
Oh - Abby. I'm sorry. In my descent from up high, her ears didn't clear fast enough, and she cried with the pain before I knew she was suffering. I showed her how to clear her ears, and the pain subsided.
We plodded along at 3500, then 3000 was better. We were in and out of small showers. It was still completely VFR with high visibility, but it did not look very good ahead. I checked every airport metar I could, and the Lafayette was reporting 3600 just straight ahead, but my eyeballs said no way. The ceilings ahead were getting much lower. I called up Lafayette tower, and they said they were just about to change the weather report as ceilings had just dropped to 1400. Enough. Time to get on the ground. Lafayette cleared me to land on runway 23. After 430 miles of flying, I landed with 15 gallons remaining- not bad!
That's where I am now. Lafayette, Indiana. About an hour's flight from the RV. It's a nice airport. They have a lovely pilot lounge with nice recliners and wifi. I'm all set to blog, while Abby enjoys an episode of Hannah Montana.