Living the dream...

Song of the week. The countdown has begun - 5 days until I leave Phoenix for home.  I can't wait! This week was steady until Saturday which was turned out to be a box of assorted treats!  Maps and I managed a 50 mile bike ride in the morning and witnessed someone being arrested by the police for illegal fishing. Outside Einstein's Bagel Shop In the evening, we had dinner and drinks at Waddell's Longhorn Corral in Buckeye with my US mate Jason (who did an exchange tour at Marham), his wife Helen (who was the RAF doctor at Marham but now lives in Phoenix) and Helen's parents (who are visiting for a month!). Waddell's Longhorn Corral Waddell's prides itself on warm beer, bad food and lousy service, hence it attracts an eclectic crowd, including Wolf from American Gladiators .  The primary audience is cowboys: Little Cowboys' Room And, of course, cowgirls: Little Cowgirls' Room And the bar is full of hilarious wisecracks like...

Song of the week comes from the classic movie franchise .  And, of course... our wedding playlist! Everything has been full-on this week and I feel like I am living my own Back to the Future film.  I ran out of time to complete this blog entry on time and a quick glance at my advent calendar shows that I have already arrived on 19th December: Already in the future! I have now completed about 20 hours of simulator training at work and I have worked my way through all of the procedures from the pilot checklist: Pilot checklist The first 32 pages of the checklist are the NORMAL drills, the next 262 pages are the EMERGENCY drills!  We have to complete each of the emergency drills in the simulator at least once and next week, I will be teaching the emergency drills as part of my instructor training programme. I have managed to start working out at the gym again in between work sessions as part of my 'fit in my 40s' plan.  Thankfully the gym on base is ...

This week's soundtrack is provided by Phoenix's very own KAZG Oldies 92.7 Arizona .  This is the radio station of choice for cruising around Goodyear! Maps and I have started to follow separate timetables this week and so we were no longer able to share a car.  The Chevy is in Maps' name, so I arranged to collect a car from our local Avis office on Tuesday.  Kathy (the Avis rep) gave me a choice: "full-sized family sedan" or "something a little more rugged."  I am not sure if it's because the Avis office is conveniently located next to the Bible Museum or not, but found myself thinking, 'what would Jesus do?' Well, Jesus was a carpenter and I think he would have preferred the 4x4 in order to transport all of his power tools, his Workmate, his nail gun, router, electric plane and his Henry hoover to clean up the sawdust when he had finished.  Based on Jesus' recommendation, I also chose the 4x4: Toyota 4Runner I have seen t...