view from above

Tucson International Airport, although I suspect what makes it an international airport is a flight to Mexico and not much else
After hours of queueing we were told that we could have a hotel overnight but that they only had 19 rooms for a whole 757 of passengers, I shared a room with a nice lady I met on the plane from PHL, according to reception, one Scottish guy actually shared a room with two Swedish women!

Must be a contender for shortest flight of my life- 90 miles to PHX although a 20 min flight time, I wont get this chance again to fly over Arizona scenery at a low level so I took loads of photos for that quilt I am going to make.

Doesn't sound like Alaska

7 am and its boiling, I have managed to get 9 mosquito bites already and I had to come in to write because its so hot and sunny out there.

Doesn’t sound like Alaska does it?

That’s because it isn’t

I am in Tucson Arizona a place so unlikely for me to end up that I don’t even know the airport code.

After finding out my plane to Dallas hadn’t ticketed from Brussels I had to wait another 7 hours in Philly for the plane to Phoenix- then another hour.then another 2- then onto the plane-then the loo in economy was blocked-then another hour- then just as we were taxiing for take off a storm appeared out of nowhere and we were stuck on the tarmac for an hour while it cleared the area. 

Since we are sat on the ground, lets have a lesson.

Ever seen these runway signs and wondered what they are all about??

The notation 27L -9R is the heading in degrees of the runway, the aviation industry loves to remove extra zeros so it is actually 270 Degrees and 90 degrees. The bearing you use depends on the end you approach the runway from , if you are  landing at 270 degrees you land on runway 27 if you are approaching from the other direction at 90 degrees the runway you land on is called 9 even though it’s the same runway in a different direction . Got it??

Where there are 2 or more parallel runways they are given the notation L Left, R Right and sometimes C Centre, not at Heathrow obviously as there are only 2.OK, thats the little gem for the day!

Even taking off, it was a ghostland of shadows and spooks in the huge grey clouds that hung in the sky.

The flight was what the captain described as lumpy, storms flashing in the clouds, what I would describe as ligh chop, if your drink doesn’t leave the glass, its not too bad in my book.

Approaching Phoenix after a 5 hour flight we came upon a Haboob................................

my picure taken in the dark, flying round the edge of it

…. Or as the newspaper put it “Blinding Arizona dust storm ushers in 2014 monsoon “

WTF?   After flying the plane like a bucking bronco, and flashes of pink outside for 10 mins or so, the captain announced we would be landing in Tucson instead. The lady behind me closed her blind because it was too scary out there, 

So landing in Tucson, only 2 staff to help 190 people,....

Gonna be a long night...

Chocolate cats

Uneventful, you know the way it is, a filght to Brussels, 45 mins in the air, something unusual for a meal and wander off to the hotel.

The meal looked like a 10 year old had helped themselves at a buffet, the miniscule salad and slices of chicken breast, there was a cheesecake like thing in what looked like a sputum pot which I offered to my neighbour but he refused it as well.

Today would have been a good day to smuggle something, Belgian customs were all watching the football on a laptop accompanied by several passengers, all eager to cheer on Belgium against the USA

The match was looking like a draw so I retreated to the bath, keeping the door open to hear when goals were scored, Belgium won 2-1 but it was surprisingly quiet from the surrounding rooms, I had been assigned a room on the club floor and there was a lounge for club members so I assume they were all in there watching the match. The highlight of the whole hotel stay  was the two Belgian chocolate cats on my pillow!

Some confusion with the hour, I woke up realising it was an hour later unlike the usual few hours earlier, packed up at lightning speed and headed over to check in.

And that’s where the problems started……………………..

As I approached the desk at the  US Airways check in , I was given a particularly thorough “going over” by a nice young Belgian bloke, verbally, mores the pity but having toddled off with my passport, I was then directed to a desk where people seemed to know my name!

Turns out the 767 had gone tech and the new plane wouldn’t arrive from Paris in time for me to make the connection at PHX . CLT plane had already left as well. The US airways check in agent was a star, she kept trying route after route to try to get me to ANC in reasonable time.

 Having recently joined OW she didn’t have a huge knowledge of the routings available and after a few suggestions and a severe case of “computer says no” (which probably wasn’t going to be funny in Brussels as I don’t know if they watch Little Britain), 

I offered to buy her a coffee, slipped out for a cigarette and she was still struggling with a way to get me to ANC. “send me back to London and let them work it out” I suggested but she wasn’t going to be beaten, mores the pity a flight from London would have been a better TATL plane on AA or BA even !

Eventually she found a routing that would work BRU-PHL-DFW-ANC  The other 2 flights being on AA no problem except arriving 18 hours late and losing a precious 150 TP by taking a flight under 2000miles, sorry Alistair there goes your GUF2 upgrade to First next trip.

They are promising me a hotel overnight at PHL as well, rather be in Alaska though.

Taking the same lift up to the BA lounge, I was directed  to the Diamond lounge, a third party pay per use lounge, sparser than the BA lounge, local beer on tap, small variety of drinks and spirits and a Starbucks coffee machine- which turned out quite the nicest cappuccino I have had from a machine, I stayed for another one instead of venturing into the BA lounge for a croissant. Also it being Belgium no one bats an eyelid at smoking an e cigarette in the lounge or around the airport.

 I am extremely fond of Belgium, it was the first place abroad we went when I was about 6, just the right mix of being able to speak the language when a bank machine eats your card and a little Dutch culture, as a nation they are a good deal more casual about EU regulations than we are, the smoking in buildings ban is observed until you get to the mat by the door, none of your 25m clearance here, dogs allowed everywhere and a nice breakfast. A Belgian breakfast (and Dutch too for that matter) is bread, eggs, cheese and ham suits me fine.  this lounge is also a member of the Airport Angels system so if you got a card free with your Barclays bank account , stop in and try the coffee.

Unlike the priority lane for security there wasn’t one for boarding but I eventually got to the front of the queue and onto the plane

Single Aisle planes

….. Ever heard me say I wont cross the Atlantic on a single aisle plane? It’s a mantra Al knows well, anyway, the substitute plane is a B757, yep, narrowbody, the seats don’t go flat, there is no IFE, no privacy and the food is American- ie not spicy at all , they don’t really get the whole Umami thing and all the food tastes of salt and not much else, the salad followed by pasta wasn’t too bad, not a patch on what I would be eating if I had persuaded her to re route me  through London and onto BA.

In all my years of travelling I have never had to press the call bell to get another drink after 2 hours without one and boy am I missing the Champagne,  I started off being furious, but since I only watch the moving map, drink myself “tired “ and I can sleep on almost anything Boeing have ever built  it has pretty much everything I need, I think the main gripe is that I could have been sat in J on a BA 787 but lesson learned- Just fight the urge to bail out at LHR on the return and fly BA next time!

Nice view leaving Brussels, 

View of the exotic coastline of ........Oostende!

Did Georgia O'Keeffe fly this route?

Arriving at Philly another hour late, I got chatting to a young Belgian girl ( to me anyway she was 23) on her way to Dallas for 2 weeks, she had missed her re booked flight because of the immigration queue, and was saying she was worried about getting things sorted out. I offered to help, explained I wasn’t a weirdo and knew PHL quite well, as a Psychology masters student she said she knew I wasn’t “strange” and accepted my help. I left her an hour later at security knowing where she was going and what to do if she didn’t get on the standby flight. I have done my bit for the next generation of solo women travellers ie showed her how to cope when airlines throw a spanner in the works!

So here I am with an unexpected stop in Philly, not long enough to go to see Lisa but long enough to get bored – I don’t suppose they will show any highlights of USA getting beaten by the Belgians on the TV will they!

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Rapidly running out of time this last few days, skip to be filled, floor in the workshop to be laid, and stuff to organise for the trip.

The workshop has been the bane of my life for the last 5 years, now, crowded with all the tools and junk from the workshop it is a true nightmare.Last week I was happily putting green painted log roll on the flower bed when I ran out of wood, ventured into the workshop for some wood and decided that it was time to tackle the mountain of stuff and stop us tripping over the bricks and stones on the floor.
A skip hired, stuff moved out enough to put up some shelves to store the rest of the junk, then to tackle the floor.........its complicated but because of the massive swimming pool in the garden the earth had to go somewhere and the garden ground level was raised by about 2ft altogether, meaning that the door was a t the correct level for the ground, now with the earth shovelled back into the pool hole, the door is a ridiculous 2ft higher than it should be, the floor was never finished by the last owner and great lumps of bricks and stone lie in wait like alligators waiting to snap you and topple you into the depths..
  Now, there is no point in digging out the finished quarter of the floor to match the original level because hardcore has to go somewhere, ie out of the door and down to a skip, better to use the remaining blocks and bits to raise the floor level to the new one and make a flat floor of that, no way am I capable of mixing concrete so broken bricks then smaller and smaller pieces topped by crazy paving is the solution.When I questioned Al as to the durability of the design, he stated that it fulfilled its design criteria, and functioned as intended ie its a floor and that the method of construction had served the Roman empire well for millenia so the new Roman floor is nearly finished!  The area I have done is probably under 25% of the floor, you really have to see the workshop to appreciate the size and scale of this monstrosity.

The chicks are growing rapidly, starting to grow feathers and learning to flap their wings, twice this week, Vulture has abandoned them to go sit on the eggs in the big coop, Rolf next door was alert enough to realise that it might be one of mine and he handed a chick back over the fence. Twice I have found a chick in the house, it cant jump so one of the cats ust have brought it in . They know they arent allowed to touch them or Vulture will actually rip them apart so they were just sat looking at it wondering what to do, I hope one of them doesnt get carried away and bite one, then the toy will be broken and Vulture will be furious.

Chickens gone- 3 of the hybrids have gone to a new home in an effort to stop next door complaining, the noise level seems to have actually increased, Felipe has been doing the full cock a doodle do in the morning quite a good alarm clock-if you want to be woken at 5am

Tomorrow I am off to Alaska, the list of stuff to do isnt getting any shorter.. Luckily the weather for the next week in Alaska looks like the weather for next week in Devizes so I wont have much of a problem packing, with the exception of the gloves and coat needed for the glacier tour

Alaska is massive, I looked at the mileage on Google maps and had to re plan slightly or I would be spending hours driving.The bit between Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula is the bit I am visiting, if I like Alaska it could take years of 2 week trips in the summer to see it properly.....just what I need another stupid flying habit!

Off to pack

King of Spain

The nice weather all week has kept me in the garden most of the week, apart from the days when I am just plain tired the whole day, like today.
 I started with good intentions, ran out of wood for the new borders and decided to investigate the shed...........bad move.
The shed is the only place where I actually feel cross at Duncan for leaving me with it, When we moved in the shed was split into 3 rooms, insulated, plasterboarded, and set up to use as a kind of summer house. For some reason Duncan set about ripping out the plasterboard, the partitions and the ceilings, none of the stuff he ripped out actually left the shed but was just piled and throw all over. Add to that the not sorted contents of his workshop and the fact that the floor is covered in large lumps of concrete and bricks and it makes a pretty lethal combination when you want to find something.
An entire car load of insulation to the tip and it doesnt look any emptier but my arms and legs are itching from all the fibres. Time for a skip.


The school prom was friday, good to see the class dressed up in their finest, they look like adults yet behave like children. After we dropped Jane off Al and I had to brave the hoardes at Avebury to get home, loads of people grubby from lack of access to hot water and soap, there was some fire batontwirling I could see from the road and heard the drumming, its the only time I can listen to drumming all night, its kind of hypnotic.

We arrived home and went to sort out the birds, I heard this peeping noise, shone the torch and there was a tiny face looking at me ! 2 out of the 6 eggs hatched and there were 2 tiny chicks.

  Vulture has been great, she is sitting with her wings up for them to hide under. Chicks dont need to eat for the first day so Al got chick crumb this afternoon, rather than have them drown in the water I made the chick crumb into porridge for them, stood them on it and very gently Vulture showed them how to peck at the food, she used a different ack ack ack noise to tell them to watch her pecking, The chicks got the hang of it after a couple of minutes, it was fascinating watching her teach them how to peck . 2 out of 6 hatched under a hen is the same rate as Carl got in an incubator, not a good year for breeding Sebrights.

Another meeting at school to sort out some of the details, mainly administrative, I am a bit worried still but I can always leave if it doesnt suit me, I have loads of new ideas and schemes of work I have been working on  when I still thought I was going to go back to my original job, but I will keep them in reserve for a rainy day .

Oh and this is Felipe, he and Catalina arrived with Sarah and Daisy last Thursday, he was going to be Antonio but as it was the day the new king of Spain was inaugurated we decided on Felipe. He's been fairly quiet mainly due to me popping him in a small coop to muffle him in the morning but he has treated me to the full "cock a doodle doo" a couple of times, I like it but I dont think next door are very happy, hopefully rehoming some of the larger girls will stop her complaining. She thinks I have 10 chickens, Luckily for me she cant count, when the 3 hybrids go there will be 10  left!

All these years I thought I was destined to be a crazy cat lady and it turns out it could be chickens instead..

On time performance

That's what has been worrying me the last couple of days, US airways seem incapable of arriving on time from anywhere, I have some pretty tight connections on the way back from Anchorage and I have the sinking feeling that I am not going to make some of them.

•   Getting to Phoenix and missing a flight isnt a huge deal, BA fly to London from Phoenix, US fly to Philly from Phoenix, plenty of routes home. 
• Getting to Philly and missing a flight is a bit more of a deal but still another possible 2 flights back to London that night if I can get on them. 
• Getting to Brussels late will be a nightmare because the connecting flight is on a different ticket and neither US or BA are obliged to do anything to help me!.I booked a flight home with Airline miles just in case it goes "bits up" but not until 9 in the evening. Ho Hum 

Long Days

 Days are still getting longer until 21st June, Midsummers day, the Summer Solstice. To most people the romantic notion of watching the sun rise on the longest day is something to look forward to, for us its a bit of mixed feelings, we only live a few miles from Avebury henge and the few days before the Solstice mean one thing ... Traffic, a procession of battered vans make their way through the town, breaking down as they limp to the henge for the celebrations, I dont think many of them are actually Wiccans or Pagans but the travellers like to meet at the henge for the solstice nonetheless. 

Over the years the Police control of the area has become more of a straightjacket, parking is limited, camping is limited, drinking is limited, roads have traffic cones placed on them for a week or so before the event and everyone has to be gone fairly early in the morning. This doesnt seem to stop the stragglers leaping out into the road like lemmings when I am trying to drive to work in the morning but it does limit the possible damage to the car !

I like Avebury, we held Duncan's wake in the Red Lion, the henge and fields gave people somewhere to go for walks and it wasnt a bad day. I think Dunc would have liked it particularly as I ordered some miniatures of his favourite malt whisky Jura to give to his friends to drink later. 

Daylight, thats what I was talking about, it has always struck me that Lisa was rather short changed on the daylight in the summer, infact most of the US seems to have drawn the shorter straw- its the latitude that does it 

 Take a look , Philadelphia is actually the same latitude as Valencia where we all know it gets dark earlier, not so strange when you think about it, 

London is the same latitude as Calgary and Alberta so they are getting the same daylight hours as we are 

Then we come to Alaska, if you look at the map, half of Alaska is in the Arctic circle, 24h daylight during the summer, even as far south as Anchorage you are still talking level with the middle of Norway, Finland, Sweden. and by the time I arrive 2 weeks after the longest day there will still be 19-20 odd hours of daylight a day.

I am glad the chickens dont get that much daylight, they can detect the dawn an hour before we can and sometimes I get up in the night look out through the conservatory and see a chicken looking back at me !

Vulture is still doing a sterling job sitting on the eggs, only a couple more days to go, she is the only one allowed breakfast in bed and I sneak her treats like a strawberry during the day. Every so often one of the others pushes her out of the way and lays an egg in with her clutch, a bit like "hatch this as well, while you are there love" even Conchita laid one in there for her.

Planning for the trip going well, all flights sorted, all hotels sorted, just the things to do during the day to sort now, one of the departure points for a wildlife half day cruise is so remote that the tunnel is only one lane wide and cars have to queue up to go through. Going to Whittier on the hour, coming from Whittier on the half hour, I dont think there is much there apart from a port and an abandoned US army building.

Not a very big tunnel is it?

Luckily the planning is taking my mind off the impending meeting with the Head next week, sometimes I feel sick thinking about  it and I have another meeting with my line manager afterwards, I just know he is going to be awkward and ask questions like "how do you feel about returning to work?" I have the answer ready for him "humiliated, despondent, set up for failure"  but I will probably just tell him that I dont feel anything.
Kwells purchased, the pharmacy asked if I suffered from travel sickness, "never " I replied when questioned further I had to tell them that you dont plan a glacier spotting trip across where the Gulf of Alaska joins near the Bering sea and not take tablets. Think Deadliest catch ..........

Just one more, it's only wafer thin

Actually its just one more trip because prices are stupid low this summer and its another once in a lifetime, bucket list type of trip. Alaska.

I have told a few people and I seem to be getting the same reaction as when we flew from Toronto to Pittsburg ie WHY?

Well, firstly we flew from Toronto to Pittsburgh to visit the Andy Warhol museum on the way to Philly in 2005, it didnt seem like a bad detour at the time until we discovered we were flying on a Dash 8-   think school minibus and you will be pretty close, 5 seats along the back of the bus and you could hear the luggage banging as it was being loaded behind the plywood panel, one stewardess and oh yes, its a prop. Alistair reminded me the other day looking at the size difference between the Brahmas and Conchita the bantam, he said "do you remember that time at Toronto airport, thats what the bantam looks like next to Blossom" 

Looks cute doesnt it? thats if you arent on it, I have the feeling that Dunc was a good deal more nervous than he let on !

The Warhol museum was actually worth the detour to see the pictures for real and close up.

We saw some brilliant images from Warhols earlier works which I prefer to the screen printed ones.

Blotted line printing is just drawing what you want to print onto a shiny surface and rubbing a piece of paper over it, thats how he made the copies of his work in the early days.

The pink Sam the cat that I own was done by this method and all his friends used to sit filling in the paint whilst partying at the Factory.

I have no doubts that the print I have is genuine, because of the type of paper, the other images of the sort and the fact that I have never seen another pink one like it mean it could have been a mistake colouring it and thats how it ended up as a single sheet. However I have no provenance with it and I dont want to submit it to the foundation because they destroy the ones they dont approve.

Oh yes, I forgot...Alaska....what does anyone know about Alaska?

This obviously 

And this one

Her..........

These of course

And plenty more which I will no doubt see during the trip

This trip is all on US airways,  I will still get all my miles and points, it doesnt have the best reputation and I dont have the best experience of it but how bad can it be?

The routing is BRU-PHL-PHX-ANC    ANC-PHX-PHL-BRU  Obviously starting from Brussels to get the cheaper fare (saving about 2 grand) and this time flying direct to Philadelphia instead of a connection in Heathrow. I have done a couple of trips where I have "bailed out" at Heathrow on the way back and this is going to get me in trouble with the airline if I do it much more (Ie they will charge me the fare to London instead) so a direct flight to Brussels means I cant skip the last leg because I am hit with apathy in London. I lose points but better to lose a "few" points than have the airline after me for a "few"grand!

Yet again I have a trip that is hard to pack for, the last time I was in Phoenix the temperature was 114F that's 46 C do you think it will be that temperature in Alaska? I think not