Finally remembered to post this one. . .
Well, we made it to the old country and now we're in the English countryside. After a freezing cold visit to Denver to get our medical checkups, we escaped to New Mexico to chill with close friends Mike and Tami, eating our way through Albuquerque and enjoying biking along the river or hiking under sunny skies. In my own humble opinion and limited experience, the best food in the USA is found in Louisiana and New Mexico. Green chilis and tasty craft beer drive my own taste buds to proclaim New Mexico the clear winner.
Having conquered Albuquerque, we decamped to the airport where after finally fixing their Boeing 737-800's navigation system (only took 6 hours), Southwest airlines finally returned us to Denver where my old skydiving pal Eric, also a Captain for Southwest, collected us for a short visit. While Isabel yukked it up with Eric's wife Christine, Eric took me out for a night flight in a Cessna 120 and in no time I had 3 landings and was current. Last visit we flew Eric's Cessna 180, a real workhorse ranch plane, and a bit more of a handful to manage but we survived. We hung out at their place for a couple of days and I got to help Eric prep their giant remodel project for a huge $4000 sheetrock job. Wow – it reminded us of our last home which we bought in a complete shambles, then rebuilt with the help of a brilliant young architect into a complete showpiece. Neither Isabel nor I think we're quite ready for that kind of life again.
British Airways got us to London Heathrow on an aging but nicely refurbished 747-400. They've upped their game a bit, and even sitting in the back of the bus we enjoyed a nice level of hospitality and a nicely upgraded entertainment system. So in the space of 3 weeks we'd flown 8 hours on a brand new Airbus A350 with French Bee (a fine discount airline experience), 1 ½ hours on a comfortable Airbus A319 with American Airlines (just fine), 1 hour on a SAFE Boeing 737-800 (always fun and great hospitality on Southwest) and another 8 hours on a quite long in the tooth but properly maintained and upgraded Boeing 747-400 with British Airways, which always feels a bit classy. Two Airbus products and 2 Boeing products. A great experience on a brand new A350 and a rather old 747. Breakdowns on newer and well-maintained smaller workhorse Airbus A319 and Boeing 737 aircraft. Air travel is just a commodity these days, but at least we were traveling on first world airlines with recognized safety records and excellent crew training. A we continue to travel throughout the world it's important to consider any airline's international safety reputation before committing to fly with them. Lion Air in particular has a terrible reputation for aircrew training and experience level and isn't allowed to conduct flight operations to the US.
We began our jet lag recovery program with our dear cruising friend Stas' and his lovely girl Ewa. Among his many amazing talents, Stas' is a serious IT wizard and sorted Isabel out on our new iPad Air, a recent addition to our navigation system redundancy. Should lightning strike JollyDogs and smite our fancy B&G chart plotter and laptops running OpenCPN, we'll hopefully still have the iPad Air with iNavix software running our highly accurate Navionics chart data for French Polynesia. After 2 days of seriously wonderful Polish / American / English hospitality, we've now found ourselves in the village of Barkway catching up with friends Richard and Kate, folks that Isabel has known for nearly 30 years. We got here without smashing up the car, pretty amazing given the recency of our wrong side of the road driving experience. Isabel is a great navigator and coached me through several rather nuanced roundabouts, a superior intersection design that keeps traffic flowing, but they do take a bit of getting used to. The weather is beautiful today and a killer air museum awaits Richard and me while Isabel and Kate will do lady things, as oddly enough they don't fancy an airplane / war museum visit. Monday we'll move on to Plymouth, then Gweek, Exeter, Yeoville, the Isle of Wight, then finally Winchester, catching up with various friends and family members along the way.
As we wander around French Polynesia, America, and England, we experience magnificent natural scenery and stunning terrain as well as tremendously varied weather conditions. It's all different, interesting, and sometimes exciting, but what life is really about for us is those people who form our sense of community. We've got our tribes in America and England, and we're discovering our tribal connections in the vast cruising community. At the end of the day, it's the people rather than the places that matter the most.