Still waiting for PT1

It's been a while since my last entry, the delay mainly caused by the arrival of my dad - visiting here for 12 days. We've all been really busy this last week - filling our days trying to see some of the local sights, but mainly fitting everything in around my flying.
We've been up to Wildlife World Zoo again, which Georgia really enjoyed, and to a couple of Malls and the like. Today my dad and I took Georgia over to Arizona Mills, leaving Clare at home to chill out. This afternoon we all headed up to Circuit City so my dad could look at buying a new laptop (I thought the staff at PC World were useless, but these guys take it to a whole new level - but he did end up coming away with a new joystick). We then headed to the cheesecake factory - which was absolutely incredible.

I've been flying a fair bit still, in preparation for my PT1 which was booked - finally - for today at 11:30. A few days ago I found out that there had been a change to students and instructors with the arrival of AP258 - and one of the changes was that Mal and Nilay were now being paired up and changing instructor, but Toddy and myself would be paired up and staying with Gilbert. On Sunday morning Toddy, Gilbert and myself picked up Warrior N994T at 6am and headed out. We filed an IFR flight plan, heading up to Prescott, then over to Payson - where we landed and had an awesome breakfast at the airport cafe. Toddy flew that first part of the flight, and after breakfast I hopped in and flew us from Payson up to Winslow, where we got fuel. We then took off again and headed west to Sedona, flying over the Meteor Crater, getting a few decent pictures and videos on the way. I'll do a proper photo album soon, but here's a quick taste:

Toddy and Gilbert at Payson



Gilbert with his monster breakfast - flaps 25 needed on take off after this!



Meteor Crater. Huge. Just huge.



Sedona. Incredible site from ground level, but at altitude - something else.



We made it back to Goodyear at about 12:50 - 50 minutes later than planned. Oh well, it was worth it. On Sunday evening I had a night solo too, so it was a very tiring day. I've had a lot of flights cancelled lately, and this seemed to show a turn for the better. I did a brilliant solo general handling yesterday - my last one before PT1, and it went really well. Unfortunately - when I arrived at Goodyear this morning to do my PT1, I found that my flight had been cancelled. As usual, nobody had thought to let me know this, so I had wasted a hell of a lot of time preparing for it - and had screwed up plans with the family in order to fit everything in. I was absolutely fuming - it's now been 2 weeks since I was ready for my PT1, and it's going to be another week now before I can get it done as I have booked a few days off for a trip to Vegas, Grand Canyon and Route 66.
What also annoyed me was the reason my flight was cancelled - being told that the instructor was sick, yet having seen said instructor in the crew room laughing and joking with others 6 minutes earlier. This is simply not good enough, and now my performance at PT1 is going to suffer as I won't be able to have a practise flight beforehand to prepare for it.

OK. Time to start thinking about the time off I have planned. I've booked us all into the Mirage in Vegas for a couple of nights, I managed to get excellent tickets to see Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian, and have booked rooms at the Grand Hotel at the Grand Canyon. Hopefully we will all get to have a great time over the next few days.

Yours disgruntled

Simon