About 5 years back I needed to take my aircraft to another field about 120 nm away for an engineer to check over the controls (the elevator seemed a bit too stiff but still within limits and flyable).
Got to the airfield a little late and the weather at the destination was fine but at the home airfield was just about on limit for wind, with rain sqaulls coming in. So I decided to get a quick departure and on my way out of the crud.
Did all the checks a bit quickly, started, warmed up and taxied to holding point - got clearance and away I went. Bit of a nasty cross wind on take-off so concentrating pretty heavily on keeping in full control and climbing out of the "curl over" from trees down the side of the runway.
At about 100 feet quick check - ASI was reading 0... suddelnly it dawned on me that I had left the pitot cover on. Quick circuit to land but now the cross wind was VERY gusty and above the limit I had ever landed before. So now I am committed to fly to the destination.
Flew all the way on power and attitude and was pleased to find my waypoints at about the expected times so airspeed was right for power / attitude.
Approaching the destination I called them up - expalined that the ASI was not functioning and I may have to do a go-round. Again used power and attitude for the landing and did a reasonable one on the (thankfully) long concrete runway - I need that extra length that day.
A bit emabaraased to have the fire truck tracking me to the parking area.
Now this may not seem too bad for you thousand hours guys, but at the time I was just over a hundred hours and had only done about 10 on type.
My back was SOAKING wet when I climbed out - very, very stressful flight worrying about the landing.
Lesson learnt - do not rush the pre-flight, and double check if you are not 100% CERTAIN. It is defintiely better to be down here wishing you were up there, rather than the other way round... and all because of a little fabric tube left in place.