The German heavy water plant in Norway

The final flight of the trip, PHX-ANC much delayed, I have had 3 boarding passes for this flight and finally I am actually on it!

The nice marine biologist going to St Paul Island that has been on the same flights since Philly had the window seat and it seemed a bit rude to keep leaning over him but there are a couple of shots, Wanita, who I sat beside from Philly and shared a room with last night at the hotel In Tucson pointed out a few times for things to see but I was too busy trying to get comfortable for most of the flight!

Only problem is its an Airbus 321, one of the most uncomfortable planes known to man, Agony doesn’t even come close, a bit disconcerting landing at 11pm and it still being light.

 One major drawback is that the Sat Nav hasn’t heard of Alaska, its an American one so I think it’s a bit rude not to include Alaska, its not like the maps are from 1959 when Alaska wasn’t part of the US. The hotel booked on the inflight wifi looks like a dump, a dump with nice views.

Good breakfast considering the hotel looked like it wasn’t going to be a success, the room was massive, with a huge view of the mountains, I would fit in in Alaska, I have no problem sleeping in the day or night and it wasn’t a huge deal getting to sleep with daylight outside.

Midnight at the hotel 

Pretty much everywhere you drive outside of town is scenic, lakes, mountains and plenty of places to stop to gawp at the view,

Sit back and look at some of the photos from along the route…….

Lake Hood seaplane base

Beluga point

The water is all muddy because of the rough sea and glacier run off

There was a gold panning demonstration at Crow Creek mine, I think you are supposed to pay for the dirt with gold in to practice on, then take shovels and pans up to the creek to pan for gold, no one up at the creek seemed to be finding any but it was a nice walk and some interesting buildings from the gold mining days.

One of the advantages of being on your own is that you can quietly tag onto a group watching a demo and no one asks if you should be there, wander up to the creek with everyone else and never get asked for your ticket!

Alyeska is a resort hotel but parts of it are open to the public too, like the tram ride (actually it’s a cable car) up the mountain . Some hardy souls hike up and back but by the time I had done that I would have been too breathless to enjoy the view!.

During the winter this slope is covered in snow which slowly slips down, it bends the tree trunks with its sliding down the mountain.

 They use artillery to trigger avalanches which prevents too many happening by themselves, the streaks down the mountains with no trees is where there has been an avalanche in the past.

Nice up there, I would have been there on my own anyway since nothing on earth would have got Dunc in a cable car, we went on an incline railway in Pittsburgh once and his knuckles were white by the time we reached the bottom, Alistair and I enjoyed the ride but then we don’t have a problem with heights!

As the cable car came back up it reminded me of an old film known in our house as “The german heavy water plant in Norway” I think the real title is something like Where Eagles dare, but no one can ever remember, I mentioned this to a couple of older blokes figuring that being American they would have a better idea of the film, Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton are in it . he had no idea but knew the film as well as I did . I guess that was back in the day when film titles weren’t chosen for their memorability. I am pretty sure it’s a colour film but since most of the action takes place at night on a snowy landscape, it could be black and white and I haven’t remembered properly!

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