Disappointment all round

It's now Wednesday July 5th, 7pm. July 4th was a bit poor to be fair, we didn't see much going on in the way of national pride. Mind you, we didn't really go out looking for it, if you know what I mean. We did head up to another large shopping mall near Glendale, which was rather excellent. Much better than Desert Sky shoe shop - although I did get a bit frazzled when it took Johnny Rockets 20 minutes to make a chocolate malt. Got a voucher for a free one next time I go though. There's a Trader Joe's up that way too which has a lot of organic foods and other healthy type stuff - a nice break from all the usual American processed crap. Speaking of which, Clare did make a rather excellent pancakes, bacon and maple syrup lunch for us all - and Georgia did have a spangly 4th July T-shirt on too!





Last night I got a text from Toddy to say I was down for a 6am flight - but I still haven't had approval to fly from the TSA yet. As it was 4th July and no operations staff were in, I had to get up at 4am this morning, get uniformed up and drive to the airport for 4:50 - to tell them that I couldn't actually fly. They had also put a couple of the other guys on 6am flights who hadn't had TSA approval, and also put down one of our guys from AP256 for a 7:30 flight even though he was still back in the UK. From what I hear from other guys on our course today it was a similar story all day - cancelled flights and general pi$$ poor organisation all round. Sorry OATC, but this is a very bad start to AP256's flying training. So much for giving us priority over all other flights too - guys turning up at 5am who could fly, to be told to come back at 9am.
I still haven't had my TSA approval, so it looks like I won't be flying tomorrow either. More time off with the family, which is always lovely.

Today we had the opportunity to take our Chevy Cobalt back to Enterprise and pick up a Chevy Impala from Hertz. The Cobalt was a great car for us (apart from not having central locking) - but the Impala is something else. 3.5 V6, more toys than you can shake a stick at - including a remote engine start feature that works from 65m away - automatically switches on air con and cools the car while you carry your shopping over to the car.
Our new car seat fits brilliantly too, using the LATCH safety system. This puts Georgia in the middle of the back seat, and her seat fastens really securely to the car using a similar system to the ISOFIX seat we have back home. Really happy that she is very well protected now.

Sorry this has been a bit of a non-entity as far as blog entries go - hopefully some time soon I can actually do some of the flying I am paying a fortune to do, and then get some decent photos and stories other than moans, groans and automobiles.