I hadn't realised quite how late on Friday my flight out of Phoenix was sheduled to be so having dropped my friend off at the airport for 9:55am I still had 12 hours in town before I left at 9:55pm.. so, I decided to visit yet another military installation, who would have thought Arizona was such a warlike state.. 

As I pulled up to the Phoenix Fighter Museum I saw a sign indicating there was a wing of the "Confederate Airforce" nearby, now anyone who knows about the CA will know why I immediately changed destinations & headed for the CA site.. I've always wanted to visit the main CA facility but havn't yet, this sattelite was small but lived up to the hype. 

For those who don't know the CA are a group of veteran pilots who salvage & return to airworthyness old airplanes, they don't mess about with static displays & are very much "hands on" which is why at 11am on a sunny Arizona Friday I was to be found crawling around inside a German Heinkel HE111 practicing blitz-speak & hoping nobody else turned up until I'd scored a direct hit on St. Pauls Catherdral (something the Luftwaffe never quite
managed) this is a very rare airplane & I can't imagine being allowed near one in a UK museum. 

So, onto my original destination, the Phoenix Fighter museum, well, after the CA what chance did they have? no matter now nice their MIG collection or how shiney their Phantom there was no sense of fun.. I will give the volunters credit though, they will happiliy engage solo visitors in long conversations without showing signs of irritation at simple questions... I do wonder at the logic of bringing parties of twenty 12 year old school
girls to a museum like this, I don't think I've ever seen so many bored faces..

Some very funny scenes though.. worth seeing for the main characters religious obsessive younger brother who starts the film nailed to a cross so he can be re-born to save mankind & only  gets wierder from there on...

Following the movie I decided to try & get a book for the flight home, the Virgin Megastore didn't have the book about Finnish Death Metal that GNHN recommended so I went on a drive looking for a mall or plaza with a proper
book shop in it... ..2 hours later and I think I have a handle on why the youth of Arizona get so caught up in hokey movie football games.. books are illegal in this state.. ok, maybe thats an exageration, but I couldn't find a bookstore worth talking about.. one 2nd hand store with more Star Trek paper backs than any planet needs and one tiny Waldenbooks aimed at the under fives.. oh well, I still have half a paperback to read on the flight.

When I got to the airport I discovered the payphones had seats, power points & modem jacks.. now couple that to 35c local calls and I was in heaven, the 90 minutes following check-in were spent online totally oblivious to the full scale security alert going on around me! I got the
gist of what was happening by listening to the tannoy announcements but wasn't quite prepared for the chaos that greeted me when I tried to get to my gate, they had evacuated the entire flight side of the airport & were searching everybody again, it seems someone had run through the security area with a knife & they couldn't find him... this weeks other 3 visits for my friends aborted trips home paid off at this point and I made my way around this gate entrance & approached from the other direction making my flight with 10 mins to spare.

I've just woken up on the plane & we touch down in London sometime in the next 30 mins, I am frozen solid.. I like to sit by a window but I'm on the end of an empty centre row, no protection from the freezing air being
belched out by the air-con.. Still, I managed to sleep most of the flight waking up only to check that my frozen kidneys were still opperative. 

This really is the end of a fabulous week, no more sunshine for a month or two,  drat, reality is dawning and the prospect of returning to work fills me with.........

Yours,

-S.