LOS ANGELES AIRSHOW

Ok so the airshow was a while ago, but it took Andrew a while to post. He's a busy man, who clearly dislikes writing and will distract himself no end when I ask him to write a post. But hey, he's done it now!

Having had a very busy week just before the airshow weekend we decided that we should probably just give it a miss, but after a last minute gift of VIP tickets from some friends at church for the LA Airshow (yes VIP!) we shot down there to enjoy a couple hours of chilling and watching aircraft in the sun. I'd say that's the best kind of relaxing!

Here are a few snaps of the airshow; including some crazy pilot who threw their aircraft around and the very very patriotic Thunderbirds. They are the US Air Force's version of the RAF's Red Arrows. I'm afraid we can't say they are better than the Reds but we might be heavily biased! ;) But they did put on a good show, take a look. 

A

THEY'RE HERE!

They're here! Yay!

It was quite an eventful drive down to get them; which included sat nav malfunctioning, a tearful phone call to Andrew, the RAF lads directing me via phone and lots of shouting at idiotic drivers. But after all that drama I finally got there and met them. Well Mum chased me down the terminal and attacked me from behind as I had walked past her!

They are settling in now and getting accustomed to the heat and the time difference. Then after a night of sleep we'll be ready to explore and see all the California has to offer. Well some of it. 

H

MACINTOSH MONDAY

I clearly spoke too soon about Mr Macintosh. As of last week he has grown increasingly worse in terms of his naughtier behaviour. Its nowhere near as bad as it was when he was tiny but the fact he's started it up again was not very impressive. The highlight of his bad behaviour was yesterday which I would tell you all about but it involves weeing in the house - no less than 3 times! Yeah not a happy bunny. So instead I'll show you where we walk Macintosh. That's a much pleasanter subject and has better pictures! 

Once you have walked out of our little compound area you are on a small estate that is made up mostly of a skypark. For those of you as unfamiliar with what that is as I was, its basically a residential airstrip. There's a runway and people build houses on the edge of it with hangars for their planes in their backgardens. It's run and managed by the residents and you can pretty much take off there when you like. Living next to it is pretty impressive as it lends itself to interesting viewing as you wander around. 

Not sure if you can spot it but there's a yellow plane nestled in amongst the buildings. Its about to go onto the runway to take off. We were standing on the pavement (or sidewalk) watching it. Pretty neat. Here's Andrew demonstrating how close to the housing and skypark you get. The runway is behind the wall. 

So after you have wandered along parallel to the skypark you only have a few houses left to walk past before you get out into the wide open space, which here means desert.

The panoramic photo shows you literally all that we can walk around with Macintosh and it continues on off into the horizon. To him its basically a giant dusty playground which goes on for miles and miles with lots of hills and mini mountains to climb, rocks to play on and strange smells to sniff. Occasionally you do go down there to find someone somewhere is using the space as a shooting range. We tend not to go walking then, not because its unsafe as you can see for miles, but rather because Mac hates gunfire and tends to dig into the ground and refuse to move unless its going home! 

We love our walks out here. Its definitely different to what we have been used to but you can go for miles in the sunshine without bumping into too many people and its just bliss. We haven't seen any dangerous wildlife yet, only their tracks, so that's making it a much more pleasant walk too. But you do have to be on your guard just in case, although generally they are more scared of you than you are of them! 

As a last note I would encourage you to check back into the blog on Wednesday because they'll be a bonus post as a certain someone turns 2 on Wednesday and will be celebrating turning from a puppy into a fully fledged adult dog. Now if only his behaviour could match it...

Good job he looks cute, otherwise there would be issues! 

H

MACINTOSH MONDAY

As most of you will now be aware Macintosh is here in the States with us! The day he arrived I was really quite nervous about the whole proceedings as it involved dealing with paperwork at the airport cargo area and customs but in the end it went more smoothly than planned so that before we knew it we were at the nerve wracking moment of waiting for him to be brought out to us.

He was brought out still in his travel crate and once we opened the door an extremely nosey dog appeared making lots of squeaky noises. It was the first time he had been out of it since the Wednesday morning UK time, so he'd been in there about 12 hours. He had no collar on though so stopping him from running off was a little more tricky than usual. Plus we didn't really want to touch him too much because a dog who had been stuck in a confined space for 12 hours doesn't smell so great as they've been sitting in some...well... not so pleasant stuff! Yeah it wasn't great. But anyway he was happy to see us.

                 

We then had to load him and his extremely smelly travel crate into the back of Victor the Volvo and travel home. The only trouble was by that point the freeway had turned into a car park as everyone was travelling home from work. Our journey instantly became over 2 hours and meant that we became very accustomed with Mac's awful smell. Yuck! 

Since Wednesday Macintosh has had a steep learning curve of getting used to the heat overview and the crazy desert landscape. As a result he hasn't been the most active of dogs as he quickly becomes hot and sweaty. So what you tend to see is him lying around the house in various spots and positions. See...

                 

                 

                              

Occasionally you do find him laying outside in the sun. This doesn't happen too often or for too long as the concrete can get pretty hot and it tends to burn his tummy. But he's a nosey dog and loves to watch people out in the street plus he always enjoyed sunbathing in the UK, he just hasn't realised how different it is here yet! 

                                 

This weekend we have begun to see him moving around more and being a bit more cheeky as he's acclimatised. Knowing Macintosh as I do I would predict he'll be back to his liveliness pretty soon and that only means one thing...chaos!

H

AVIATION MUSEUM TRIP

On Saturday myself and few of the guys from the more geeky end of the spectrum drove to Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum. This is a the main avaition museum for the whole of the US Navy. So when you have an aviation museum based on navy aircraft, what do you get? Yes you have guessed it...LOADS OF FLYING BOATS!!!

Seriously I was loving it! The problem was we decided to go to the cafe first and the service was slow and I just wanted to gobble it down and see the planes, then to annoy me even more the other guys ordered deserts, so I had to wait even longer! I'm sure the waitress took at least 25mins just to get the receipt!

So learnt a load more about flying-boats from little biplanes to massive transporters; they also had a cool collection of airship bits. We also had a little look round the base which had loads of old hangers and old buildings as this was one of the sites where the flying boats went through a lot of initial development. Sorry, I'm probably boring some of you. If you're not bored then wikipedia has a good article about the Naval Air Station.

Roll the slides....

A.

DOG WALKING

One of the reasons I love walking Macintosh around camp is because of the Red Arrows. There's nothing better than strolling around camp and hearing the roar of the planes overhead. After three years of living here they never cease to wow me with the stunts they pull off. It's awesome just being able to look out the window and watch them practise. It makes me feel quite proud of the RAF and quite proud to be British too; something I don't necessarily feel all that often. 

So today as I was walking with Macintosh we were treated to a display by a lone Red Arrow who was practising all the weaving that he does in and out of the other planes. Unfortunately I only had my iPhone with me so the photo isn't the best quality but I think it captures something of that feeling of amazement you get when in the middle of the ordinary you get this moment of brilliance. 

H

                

BACK TO BUSINESS

So after a very long flight of sitting in one spot followed by the longest queue for immigration ever, I felt pretty down about coming back. However I was promptly cheered up by an old chatty Japanese lady sitting next to me on the flight asking me about English politics and discussing the amazing views of the sunset out the window.

No sooner we had arrived did more problems arrive, with baggage at the wrong airport and other lads delayed but all were swiftly sorted. Off to get our new rooms and unpack and sleep, lots of sleep!

I have a room almost identical to my old one, just slightly bigger so I can now swing two cats and maybe a third if I work out the maths. I have also made a small effort to make it a bit more homely too with a calendar I received at Christmas and some pictures I've bluetac-ed (is the a word Han?) up.

So back to work after I better get rid of my beard! I'll leave you with the view from the plane (the sunset not the old Japanese lady!)

A