Car hunting

I've just spent the last three days running all over the country looking to buy a car. We sold ours before going to the USA, and upon return to the UK we had planned to borrow my dads spare car. Unfortunately, it had a problem with the alarm system, and had to go into the main dealer for repair - leaving us no way of getting around. The hunt for a car started, and after much internetting, and much zooming around in the Porsche, I finally found something today and drove away 30 minutes later. With one day left of my break before starting back at OAT, we're going to try to make the most of it and get out and about lots tomorrow. Guarantee it'll be awful weather (again).
Not to worry, hopefully now things are on the up. I'm looking forward to getting back to the airport again, and meeting up with some of the guys. Surprisingly enough OAT have failed miserably to keep me notified as to what the plan of action is - but fortunately Wing Commander Todd had the necessary details and was able to forward them on to me.

Now it's time to go chill out with a couple of drinks and a movie, as it's gonna be back to hard work again as of Tuesday...

Home!

We made it home! Yippee!!!

It was touch and go for a while though - my friend Jeroen was picking us up from our apartment and taking us to Sky Harbor, but he was delayed coming to get us. I couldn't get hold of him either as he was flying, and when he was 30 minutes late with no contact, I was starting to worry. He eventually called to say he was ok, back on the ground, and on his way. Phew!
We made it to the airport with about 2 hours to go until the flight, so we were fine. We made our way over to the BA desk and found nobody else there. We just wandered straight up and checked in... something I've never experience before - and in total contrast to the monumental wait we had when checking in at Heathrow.
It turned out that the flight was half empty, so we were able to get three seats together no problem. We finished checking in our luggage (six big cases, a rucksack, a holdall, a laptop bag, a small case for Georgia, a pram and a car seat!) then wandered through to be poked and prodded by security people. Things have relaxed a little, but they were still very thorough. No problems other than us having two laptops to explain, but they were fine in the end.
The flight boarded soon after, and we got through to the front of the queue at the gate (babies - useful)
Once on the plane I asked a member of the cabin crew if we could possibly go up to the flight deck once we were back on the ground at Heathrow. This was something we could have done on the way out to Phoenix - a lot of the guys off the course did but we couldn't be bothered at the time. I explained to her that I was a pilot, and let her take my Class 1 medical cert as proof (everything else was packed away...)
She came back a short while later and said it was fine, but literally 30 seconds later the first officer turned up and asked if we wanted to go up to the flight deck now. Too right! All 3 of us went up there and were made very welcome. They didn't even throw us out when Georgia tried pressing all the buttons...
The flight crew were very nice and chatty, and even let me stay up there while they were getting departure clearance and loading up the FMC. It felt good when the cabin crew called up as I wasn't in my seat, and the Captain said 'it's ok, he's up here with us. He's a pilot, so he'll be staying here a while longer'. They offered me the chance to come back up at the end of the flight too. It was nice to see all the faces of the toffs in first class when I wandered back out too :-P

Back to the flight - and everything went pretty well. Georgia slept for about 5 of the 10 hours. Clare managed to sleep some too, but as always on a flight I couldn't get comfortable. 10 hours of being crammed into a small seat with no legroom - not great. We made it back to Heathrow with 20 minutes to spare, but unfortunately this time was eaten up when it transpired that the aircraft that was in our parking space was delayed, so we had to sit on the taxiway for 30 minutes waiting for a spare ramp.

We eventually got sorted, off the plane and picked up all our luggage. We then had to track down the airport cars people - they'd wandered off because we were late coming through. They go off the landing time, but that was ages ago... we eventually found the dude, and after cramming all our bits and bobs into his people carrier, we were on our way back to our home. 10 minutes into the drive and it barely felt like we'd been away.

We made it back to our house after one hour fifteen, and I just closed the door when my dad rolled up, looking quite flash in his new car (Porsche Cayman S, in bright yellow) Georgia seemed pretty happy to be home - what with all her old toys being here. All in all it was a very nice journey back. None of us seemed jet lagged at all, which helped.

I'm still going through the mountain of mail from the last 20 weeks, and we still have a couple of cases to unpack. We're getting there though. Soon I'll be back at Oxford starting the next phase of training, but I'm going to do my best to enjoy the week off.

I'm not sure how often I'll update this blog now to be honest. Maybe once I start flying again I'll feel like there's something to say...

Righto, time to get to bed. Twenty to four in the morning is quite silly...

Leaving on a Jet Plane

First post - just making sure this blog is working ok.
If you're reading this, there's a good chance you've just read my last post on my other blog. We're still in Goodyear now, but tomorrow we will be heading back to the UK.
It'll be nice to get back to our house and see our family and friends again. Not so nice to see the British weather again....