On Jun 20, 10:51*am, Mike Granby wrote:
Yesterday I was flying from York PA to Myrtle Beach IFR, direct to
destination at the time, and the controller called me and said that I
had to make a decision. The airspace ahead was "closed" so I could
either be routed around it IFR, or I could cancel and climb 500 ft,
and continue VFR for a while, and get my IFR back from the next
controller. (He stressed that he was in no way soliciting a
cancelation -- it was my call.) Since I didn't want to go out of my
way, I cancelled, climbed and stayed on the same code for advisories,
and sure enough the next controller offered me IFR again, so I was
recleared to destination and put back on an IFR altitude. Never heard
of this before. Any comments?

I suspect this is your explanation:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1579599.html

"For about 30 minutes early Friday evening, several air corridors
above Eastern North Carolina had to be shut down because there was no
air-traffic controller available, said Curt Johnson, vice president of
the union's Washington Center division."