Letter from America

Mountain Lions and Bears

2008-08-24T17:53:00.005-05:00

Out on the bike again, and because I am deeply in need of a break, I am taking the opportunity to update y'all from the comfort of Starbucks with an iced coffee by my side!

A couple of weekends ago, Jen and I, along with another couple of friends headed over to Alberquerque, New Mexico. We arrived late Thursday evening, and hopped in our rental car which, in common with most other American rentals that I have had the misfortune to encounter, had the wheels attached to the chassis by means of a water bed. Luckily, the roads in this part of the world are fairly straight and wide, so by 2am we found ourselves north of Durango, Colorado, safely installed in a ski condo, with only some superficial scratches on the car, and having visited the wrong side of the road but a few times.

Friday morning came around, and we got our first view of the pine forest and mountains that we were in the middle of. It's times like this that I really appreciate the alternate Fridays off; I mean less than 12 hours prior we were in Houston, now almost 1000 miles away.

We headed off up the Million Dollar Highway, so called because it cost one million bucks a mile to build. An alternative explanation is that it takes you through many old mining towns, and past old mines. I like it either way. Our first stop was Molas Lake, just south of Silverton. This was the campsite that I had stayed at whilst doing my geological mapping project back in the days of Liverpool uni. We reserved ourselves a camping spot for the next two nights, and then went to stock up on lunch materials for our planned afternoon stroll.

Unusually, this walk begins downhill. It wasn't a gentle slope either, a pleasant walk through the alpine meadows at 10,500 feet gives way to a 1,600 foot decent into the precipitous Animas Canyon along the Colorado Trail. The route gives some spectacular views of the mountains, some topping out at over fourteen thousand feet, and the Animas river far below. The Durango - Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad runs along the river at the bottom of the canyon. We arrived at the bottom of the canyon just in time to get up close and personal with one of the trains; its very cool to stand a metre away from the tracks, in a wilderness area with a steam locomotive barreling towards you! We recharged with some cereal bars, and slowly began the walk back to camp. Suddenly the canyon looked much bigger than it had done on the way down! To make matters worse, the altitude really let's you know who's boss. 10,000 is a long way up.

That evening we popped into Silverton for a beer and a bite to eat, before returning to the campsite. Just as we were at the tents, a rather large thunderstorm hit, thwarting our plan to have a campfire. It was as noisy as hell, but great to be warm and snug in a tent, listening to the rain and thunder, having violet circles in your eyes from the lightning, and being in one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Saturday morning dawned milky blue, with a light mist that was burning off as we breakfasted in Silverton's Brown Bear Café. We drove up to Andrews Lake and set off on another route that I'd found in the past whilst doing my mapping of the area. We took the crater lake trail up a series of fairly civilised switchbacks, before cutting off left, walking over limestone and sandstone beds and into an alpine meadow where we took a break as we watched marmots playing on the sunny rocks.

After some yomping through the flattish meadows, the trail took a turn for the more vertical, and proceeded up the quartzite slabs overlooked by the 13,077 feet of Snowdon Peak. The climb took us over the 12,000 foot contour, an altitude at which interestingly I can fly a plane over only for a maximum of 30 minutes without supplemental oxygen. We passed some snow patches left from the previous winter, and through stunted forests and topped out by crossing a saddle on a ridge into a land of wildflowers and shallow alpine lakes. This made for a good lunch stop, and yours truly took a quick dip in the water, which, for the record, was very, very, very, veryvery cold. Did I mention it was chilly?

We were chased downhill by rather black looking clouds through thick forests and pink quartzite boulders, until we picked up the crater lake trail that took us back to the car. Jen by this point was struggling due to the rather mental decision to go hiking without an insole in ONE of her shoes. Apparently it was eaten by the dog. As you can imagine, this caused a little bit of an imbalance, and pretty much ruined her ankle. Doh!

EDIT @ 9pm: Jen has just asked me to point out that she is not physically inferior in any way (and that is wasn't nice of me to imply that), it was merely an "equipment malfunction" that caused the problem! I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I was very impressed with the resilience exhibited, and if it were me, I would have lain down on the ground and refused to take another step until the helicopter arrived.

We rewarded ourselves with a decidedly mediocre meal at the Pickle Barrel, again in Silverton, avoided a bit of drizzle by having a sunset photo opportunity at Molas Pass, and retired to the tents to do the campfire thing. We managed to get the wet wood burning quite efficiently, it turns out a bag of charcoal and a block of firestarters works a treat.

On Sunday, we scarpered earlyish, and drove down the 50 miles to Durango, where we stocked up with coffee and pastries for breakfast. Destination for the day was Santa Fe, back in the state of New Mexico. We wound our way there the long way, made slightly longer thanks to the so called Hertz NeverLost GPS (subsequently christened 'bitch'!) whom we had clearly confounded by taking it to a place with no roads that it knew about.

The others picked up a car in Santa Fe, as rather stupidly they had to head back to Albuquerque to catch a flight for work on Monday, but we all had chance for a quick walk around the pueblo and a bite to eat. Jen and I took the "low road" to Taos which, after passing through the crappiest town in the USA, turned in to a spectacular drive through red canyons lit by a hot sun that was also illuminating huge thunderstorms ahead of us. We thought the distant thunder sounded like rocks hitting the windshield, until it turned out that it was rocks hitting the windshield that sounded like rocks hitting the windshield. Unfortunately, one left a 5cm impact star as a memento.

It was a thundery Taos that greeted us that Sunday evening, and we went directly to the Cottonwood Inn, a simply stunning B&B that I'd found for the night. On the Taos ski valley road, it was excellently located for a little evening stroll and some further sunset photos high up by the ski lifts.

If you're ever in Taos, stay at this place! The owners, Shantel and Brantly, are ex Houstonites, and had the good sense to get out of the oil patch and head for the mountains. This tells you all you need to know about them! The building itself is a beautiful Adobe home, with stunning gardens where breakfast was served in the morning.

We had chance on Monday for a walk around Taos, and took the high road back towards Santa Fe and on to Albuquerque for the return flight home to Houston.

We were out of the airport by 11pm, and home shortly after. A great weekend, with a lot packed in to four days. Carpe Diem!

Oh and no, we didn't see any bears or mountain lions.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Summer in Houston

2008-08-03T15:10:00.001-05:00

Well, summer is well and truly here now, but we've had no hurricane scares yet this season. We got dumped on with a lot of rain for three days or so as hurricane dolly came onshore way down on the Texas / Mexico border, but not much wind up here.

I have taken to riding my bike a bit more often, braving the 100 F temperatures and the hummer drivers. Today I made it as far as Starbucks where I succumbed to a large iced coffee for my efforts.

Last night I went to "white linen night" in the heights. The houston heights is one of the more close in suburbs, and is a fairly old neighbourhood that is undergoing somewhat of a revival. Last night was great; almost like living in Austin, with hundreds of people out on the streets, bands playing on the pavement and all the shops open until late. A great atmosphere.

Went for breakfast this morning to a little café on 6th Street and Yale. 2 eggs over easy, wheat toast and bacon. Coffee of course, and an OJ. Got rid of the slight headache which was acting as a reminder of the night before. Another entire bottle of pimms gone. And I can't buy another because its Sunday. They call this the land of the free...

Oh, I forgot to mention that we went to see "Not the Messiah" with the Houston symphony and Eric Idle at Jones Hall last month. Very funny. And of course very silly. Basically an oratorio based on the Life of Brian movie. John DuPrez was conducting, and there were bagpipers, and even a sheep. When you see the words "and a sheep" in the promo material for a production at a symphony hall, you kinda have to buy a ticket or two.

Signing off now. Gotta figure out what outdoory stuff I can justify buying for a trip up to new Mexico and Colorado next weekend.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Vote for Obama

2008-06-13T12:12:00.001-05:00

I went to see Eddie Izzard at Jones Hall, downtown this week. He's in the middle of a US tour at the moment, and the place was packed for both of the Houston dates.

He was great, very very funny as expected, and provided a no holds barred approach to presenting his views on the election, and religion, two topics of conversation that you are best to avoid in republican Texas!
--
Sam Clayton
www.samclayton.net

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry.

The Great and the Good

2008-05-30T14:21:00.003-05:00

Hey Y'all,

Well, May has gone very nicely, thanks for asking, and has resulted in my becoming a full year older, but sadly no wiser. Such is life.

I was invited (plus one) to a British Airways reception the other week here in Houston to "celebrate the move of the Houston flights from Gatwick to Heathrow". The great and the good of Houston were there, along with Willie Walsh, CEO of BA who talked much about how excited they were to have this move happen, how he was sorry he kept losing all our bags, and how the Houston flights will only move into T5 later this year when all the glitches have been ironed out of the systems. Right.

They had put in a lot of effort with this event; for about 150 attendees (I'd estimate) there were a couple of BA chefs from the London lounges cooking up some awesome food, plenty of drinks to be had, a mockup of the new Club World (business class) cabin and seats which I was lucky enough to encounter on my trip to South Africa last year.

In the corner was a flight simulator hooked up to proper controls of the new Boeing Dreamliner (787), so of course I had to have a go on that. Sadly, I have to report that the first time I brought the plane down on houses just outside the airport boundary (no power to the engines), and the second time I surfed along the runway at 170 knots thanks to the throttles refusing to reduce power at all. I assume Boeing will work out these kinks before they send people up in the real Dreamliner... Those airport protesters might have something genuine to complain about if the real plane keeps landing on their property...

The next shindig we were invited to was in honour of BHP Billiton's sponsorhip of the Beijing Olympic Games later this year. All the metal for the medals come from BHP Billiton mines, and probably most of the materials used to build the stadiums (and the rest of China come to that) too. The final of the Mens Gymnastics Championships was being held here in Houston, and BHPB made a big thing of it by having over 300 people down at Reliant Park. Multi-olympic medal winners Mary Lou Retton and Peter Vidmar were guests, and took part in a great Q&A session in the BHP Billiton room before the event, as well as taking time to explain to us how the scoring works, and what were were looking at. The event was very enjoyable, and was basically being used to select the USA Gymnastics team for this year's olympics.

BHPB impressed me with food and drinks flowing freely all evening.

Work continues well - currently a lot of activity at our operated Shenzi Development with wells drilling and new information coming in all the time which makes for a very interesting and exciting time.

I've booked tickets home for the end of June, early July (yes, with BA!), and will be heading up to Scotland as well as London and North Wales most likely on the schedule.

Posted some more pictures on www.flickr.com/samclayton.

A Little Light Flying

2008-05-18T23:45:00.001-05:00

Downtown Houston, originally uploaded by Sam Clayton.

Had another buzz around town today. Got this nice shot of Downtown Houston from the C172.

May.

2008-05-11T15:27:00.001-05:00

I have just realised that it appears to be May. This is a good thing in some ways, but does herald the beginning of the end of the good weather, and rings in the 100+ F temperatures and high humidity of the Houston summer.

I was 'volunteered' to be a captain for the first ever BHP Billiton dragon boat team a couple of months back, and I am pleased to report that the team, many of whom had never been in a dragon boat more than once prior to race day, did us proud by coming 3rd in the energy cup, and 5th overall out of 30 teams. Nice job! We'd been kitted out in BHP "thunder from down under" t shirts and Aussie style hats for the event which went down very well with the locals. It did turn out that "thunder from down under" is also a group of male strippers from Australia performing in Las Vegas (if you're interested!), but as we'd already printed the T-Shirts... Ah well. Best laid plans...

I spent yesterday at an Aussie mates stag do which went off very well. We kidnapped the poor chap, and drove off up to a paintball park near Tomball, close to the airport I fly from. It appears that the Saturday lunchtime crowd in Texas burger joints are a bit bemused when you bring in a guy in pink fluffy handcuffs and a pillow case over his head, Guantanamo Bay style.

I'd not been paintballing for ages, and it was great fun running around sniping at people through the forest. Those little paintballs don't half move though, and you certainly know about it when they hit you!

Took the diamond DA 20 out for a spin last Sunday evening. I love that plane! It's so small that its almost like wearing an aircraft, and is just an extension of your body. Its very sprightly and turns on a dime; you can knock it on its side and pull awesomely tight turns without pulling the wings off. This is of course a good thing.

Its a great priviledge to be able to just take off and fly over the "great nation state of Texas", taking a look at cars passing below, flying low along the Brazos river, and watching the sun go down off your wing.
--
Sam Clayton

www.samclayton.net

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry.

Nice Evening Flying

2008-04-13T23:28:00.001-05:00

G1000 PFD and MFD, originally uploaded by Sam Clayton.

Flew over to La Grange on Saturday evening as it had been a while. Took the new Cessna N172BW with the G1000 flight deck out for a whirl, and it was great, even if the autopilot is a bit hit and miss about stopping once it gets to the assigned altitude. Ah well. Gives me something to do! Was a beautiful evening, and the weather, plane and pilot behaved well.

Big Bend

2008-04-08T22:40:00.001-05:00

Xterra, originally uploaded by Sam Clayton.

Went over to Big Bend last weekend.

A long way, but we drove over to Fort Stockton after work on Thursday, were in Big Bend mid-morning on Friday, and managed to hike and drive and swim for 2 days before heading back to Houston!

Just shows the weekend is what you make of it!

My Yellow Car had fun too.

Flickry Goodness

2008-04-08T21:56:00.002-05:00

Hello.

Just a quick one to say that I am putting my good photos on flickr.com.

The address is http://www.flickr.com/photos/samclayton/.

Please tell me what you think!

Austin and Helicopter Crashes

2008-03-27T20:57:00.004-05:00

Morning all!

Well, Terminal 5 opened today at Heathrow. That went well didn't it? Hopefully they'll get it sorted before the Houston flights move there from Gatwick at the end of April.

Anyway, I went to do my HUET training in Lafayette, Louisiana a couple of weeks ago. HUET stands for Helicopter Underwater Egress Training. This is mandatory training for all those who travel offshore in helicopters, and was a lot of fun!

Because helicopters are nasty things that shouldn't really fly if you actually sat down and worked it all out, they have a tendancy to crash all over the place. When flying over water, they tend to dump you in the drink upside down, because some engineer thought it would be a great idea to stick the engines on top, thereby making them float upside down pretty well. This is just one reason you should always be deeply suspicious of engineers.

I drove the 3 and a bit hours east along I-10 to Lafayette, and stayed overnight in a very 1980's Hilton. The morning saw me in class for a couple of hours, getting a skim through different types of helicopter, how to jump off oil rigs, why you shouldn't work in the North Sea and other exciting and deeply reassuring things.

After a relaxing, and not at all nervous lunch, we changed and went to the pool, where we were duly strapped into a mockup of a helicopter fusalage, and dumped upside down into the water. If you got out, you passed.

Well, actually, it was a bit more gradual than that. We climbed in, and whilst the helicopter was held a couple of feet above the water we were told and shown how to jettison the doors and windows. The helicopter was lowered into the pool, and we had to unbuckle, and swim out of the openings - a piece of cake.

The next run saw us dropping in with the doors and windows in place. The idea was to wait until the inrush of water had stopped, remembering to take a breath before it came over your head, jettison the door, keep one hand on the exit and unbuckle with the other before swimming clear.

The next run was fun. In we went, but immediately rolled upside down. Water was pouring in - remember to take a breath - feel for the door latch - where is it where is it - it's by my knee it's by my knee - pull, hand on exit, unbuckle and swim clear... Phew! It sounds simple, and really is, but it's amazing how disoriented you get when underwater and upside down and strapped in. You know really thet the door latch is still by your knee, but your mind tells you that for some reason it is now moved, just because you're upside down... Here's the place we did it, if you'd like photos!

Following this run we did some more, but this time you had to wait (still strapped in and upside down) while the person next to you jetissoned the window and exited before following them. The window just pushed out with a good shove - but it only works if you're strapped in. If you do what I did and try to open the window after unbuckling yourself, you simply push yourself away from the window as there is not much to brace against.

After the drowning, we spent the rest of the afternoon floating around in the pool, inflating life rafts and jackets, learning how to climb in them, making floatation devices from your overalls and all manner of interesting things.

The water in the Gulf of Mexico is nice and warm (~80 deg F year round) so you stand a great chance of survival if you get out of the burning twisted pile of helicopter that's just screamed into the sea at a million miles per hour.

Anyway, on to more benign stuff...

Went over to Austin with some freinds a week or two later. Had a nice time in the Sunny weather doing a little wondering about Hamilton Pool, just outside Austin where there is a nice green natural pool in the limestone which is a good place to swim in the summer. Just took some pictures this time though, and spent a while trying to photograph turtles, but always just got a little too close causing them to plop into the pools.

It was very nice to get that feeling that summer is around the corner, with the Hill Country spring breeze, pleasant temperatures, blue sky and fresh smell - perfect.

And after a short intermission...

2008-02-17T21:11:00.002-06:00

... I am back.

Where have I been you ask? Well, since last posting, I've been to the UK for a week in Leeds (unpaid!), The UK again en-route to South Africa for a field trip to the Lainsburg area, and then back to the UK for Christmas which was spent in fine style up in North Wales.

In between the transatlantic hops, I went over to Phoenix for fun, and also managed to scam a trip to San Francisco for the AGU conference where I co-presented a poster on the Virtual Seismic Atlas, coming to a web browser near you shortly.

I came back to Houston in January for two weeks of wrapping up before moving jobs within BHP Billiton; I'm now up working for the Shenzi Subsurface Team (http://www.google.com/search?q=shenzi+bhp+billiton) which is proving to be fun, challenging and mighty hard work in about equal measure.

Of Weddings

2007-08-14T14:25:00.000-05:00

I'm 38,000 feet over Massacheusetts as I type this, bound from Gatwick to Houston aboard British Airways flight 2027. We've still 3 hours left to run, so following a nice afternoon nap I thought I would have a chat to you all.

The trip to the UK for Tom and Lindi's wedding was great, the wedding itself was a fantastic success, with both the main characters showing up on time and in great form! After months of sustained rain in the UK, the weather relented and we had a superb day, with completely clear blue skies, and temperatures in the upper 20's (that's in Celsius for you Yanks...)

The day before the wedding, after trying on the fancy dress provided by Moss Bros., we headed to the local pub for a beer or two, and thence to the rehersal at the church where we were instructed in the minutiae of the service itself. It involved a lot of ushering people around, moving to certain places, in a certain order with certain people. This was very complicated. I was mosty worried about getting up to the pulpit to give a reading without tripping over my own feet, the pew, the kneeley mat things, the flowers, the steps or the bride.

After the rehersal, we headed to the pub (yes again, but we were told to by the God bloke (Canon I think)). Dave (best man) spent a while scaring Lindi with potential material for his speech, and Lindi scared him back by informing him he was to be Master of Ceremonies, a duty until this point, unallocated.

A couple of beers later, we headed back to The Swan, where the Clayton Brothers were staying, along with the Garveys (The Germans!). We sat outside enjoying the superb weather and more beer was consumed until midnight, when an early night was had by all to prepare for the big day on Saturday.

After leaving breakfast until the last minute (10 to 10!), I stuffed myself with bacon sandwiches (that's decent bacon for you Yanks!) and had a bit of a wander round the little village we were staying in. It was all very English, with a village green, pubs, a church and narrow roads with tunnel-like vegetation closing you in. There was even a Foot and Mouth outbreak barely 10 minutes away just to complete the picture of rural England.

Houston to Laramie - A pilot's view.

2007-07-29T00:22:00.000-05:00

Hooks Ground, Seven Juliet Alpha runup complete, ready for departure.

Seven Juliet Alpha, roger. Taxi to and hold short of One Seven
Left Approach and contact Tower on 118.4.

Hold Short 17L Approach, going to tower point four, Seven Juliet
Alpha.

Hooks Tower, Seven Juliet Alpha ready to go, holding short 17L
Approach.

Seven Juliet Alpha, cleared for takeoff 17 Right at Echo.

Cleared for takeoff, 17 Right at Echo, Seven Juliet Alpha.

I taxied onto the runway, centered the aircraft, and increased the throttle to the stop. Ease back at 44 knots, climb at 58 knots. Positive rate of climb, flaps up. Turn to the right, 90 degrees, and again to head north west, bound for Laramie, Wyoming, over 900 miles away.

The weather had been very bad in Houston for weeks, with almost continuous rain and storms, and I was very close to cancelling the trip to Laramie for Chris and Andy's wedding, and buying a commercial airline ticket for the trip. However, I thought I'd see if I could sneak out of Houston around the storms, as the weather promised to be fine once I reached the Dallas area, only a couple of hundred miles to the north.

I climbed up to escape the lowest clouds at 2,000 feet, and then wound my way around the biggest storms, but had a fair bit of rain to deal with. I was consious also of the Prohibited area, P-49 that is over Bush's ranch at Crawford, TX, as I was not cleared to overfly that. The weather pushed me to within several miles of the place however!

I flew over Waco, and Lake Whitney and fuel consumption placed me within reach of my first stopping point at Wichita Falls' Kickapoo Downtown Airport. What a great name! I dived under a low bank of stormy weather, and then came out into the sun, the first I'd seen in weeks! I entered on the left downwind keeping a sharp lookout for the jets training at the Shepherd Airforce Base, and landed on runway 17.

Whilst my aircraft was being refuelled, (279 nautical miles down), I checked the weather and called for a briefing of the hazards that would lay along my route to the next planned stop of Liberal, Kansas. Duly appraised of weather issues (very scattered storms a fair way from my intended route and no flight restrictions), I climbed back in the Diamond DA-20 and took off once more.

I climbed up to 6,500 feet, and headed northwest once more, leaving Texas for Oklahoma for the first time. I was heading into an area with a fair bit of military traffic, so thought I would call the local approach control for a bit of help in looking for other traffic that may affect me.

Altus Approach, Diamond Three Nine Seven Juliet Alpha with request.

Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha, go ahead.

Altus Approach, Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha is a DA-20 with Uniform at
6,500 feet 16 miles southeast of Altus, northwest bound for Lima Bravo Lima,
request flight following, traffic and workload permitting.

Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha, Roger. Squawk 5253.

Once I'd been identidied by the Squawk Code on their radar, I flew through the Altus Terminal Radar Service Area, and was handed off to Kansas City Center. As it was Friday evening, there was little traffic in the skies, so I had a pretty uneventful journey with no advisories from air traffic control. The weather was calm, with blue skies, and just the hot sun beating down on the aircraft, a mere dot above the Oklahoma, North Texas, Oklahoma again and finally Kansas plains. I flew over rivers, Interstate highways and county roads with trucks all but invisible but for the plumes of dust thrown up behind them. There were scattered ranches, and grain silos that would catch briefly in the sun as I zipped over with a groundspeed of anything up to 148 knots (170 mph), thanks to a nice tailwind from the south.

By 7pm I was approaching Liberal, Kansas, and made a great approach to landing on runway 17. I headed inside, once again called the briefer for weather, checked the radar and decided to call it a night as my next planned stop, Longmont at the foot of the Rockies was another 2 or so hours away and wouldn't be reachable in daylight. Whilst I am happy flying at night, I decided that mountains, dark and an unfamilar airport may not be the best combination.

I secured the aircraft for the night on the Kansas Plains, and was collected from the airport by a local motel, and taken downtown for the night, installed myself in a basic but comfortable room and pretty much just hit the sack. I'd spent the day at work, and the late afternoon and evening flying over 500 miles from Houston - all in all an action packed day.

I woke early in the morning, and was back at the airport by 8am and in the air by 8:30am, resuming my north-westerly progress towards Wyoming. The ground over which I was flying, although flat, had risen to over 3000' elevation, so I was flying higher as a result. Gradually, on the horizon, I began to make out a hazy image of higher ground - my first glimpse of the rockies. So quickly that it was a shock, the plains and ranchland gave way to towns and suburbs of Denver, and I once more had to content with busy airspace, restrictions and locating a safe routing under the Denver airspace for my landing at Longmont. I took a wide circle approach to landing due to the skydiving activity over the airport, and placed my plane down at 9:45am local time (I had gained an hour due to time zone changes).

The Rocky mountains reared up from the Colorado Plains above the airport providing a fantastic backdrop to the busy skydiving and small aircraft flying in and out. The Sun was hot, over 33 C at the plane, giving me a bit of sunburn whilst waiting for freinds to drop by - they'd spent the night in Longmont. It was fun to show everyone around the plane - it always causes comment as the Diamond is so small - just a two seater - but has a surprising number of interesting buttons to play with, and good performance to boot, something I was glad of when it came time to take off from a high airport in the middle of the hot Colorado day.

Takeoff time came, and I waggled my wings as I departed on the final leg of the journey to Laramie, now only 75 miles away. The hot sun had caused storms to begin building over the mountains, so I bounced through the rising air, gaining the necessary altitude to safely get me over the mountains and into the Laramie basin. The airport came into sight, and I overflew the field to remind myself of its layout, and landed on Runway 3, and taxied to the ramp for the final engine shutdown. I had arrived. 803 nautical miles direct, a little further thanks to storm avoidance, but I was there, over 7,000 feet higher then I had been when taking off from Houston.

Spam Spam Spam Spam

2007-06-10T11:54:00.000-05:00

Well, Spamalot is playing in Houston at the moment, so on Friday, 6 intrepid Yanks, Aussies and the token Brit (me) went down to the Hobby Center on the edge of Downtown to experience the silliness that is Monty Python. As the promo material says, Spamalot is "a new musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

It was fantastic! Started off with the Finland song, and then a lengthy discussion about how the coconut that King Arthur uses in lieu of a real horse came to Britain in the Middle Ages (African Swallow perhaps??) Sir Robin (the not quite so brave as Sir Lancelot) was introduced complete with minstrel troupe (Singing "Brave Sir Robin ran away, he shat his pants and ran away...")

The French Taunters were there too ("Your father smells of elderberries") and John Cleese was the voice of God ("Stop bloody apologising, I hate it when people bloody apologise all the time. And don't look up my skirt.") Tim the Enchanter showed up, along with the Holy Hand Grenade ("One shalt pulleth the sacred pin, and counteth to Three, Three shalt be the number to which thou shalt count. Four shalt not be counted to. Five is right out. The number of the counting shalt be three, and then thou shalt lobbeth thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thine enemy who shall be blown into tiny pieces... Now the congregation shall stand and sing 'Get Your Hand Off My Knee You Dirty Old Bastard'")

Brilliant - a great night out. I think it's on in New York and London too, so go and see it if you haven't already.

Also on the subject of Spam, my Google Email software tells me that I have had 2579 Spam messages in the last month. Amazing.

and bang goes the Mountain...

2007-06-03T20:13:00.000-05:00

Hello Ladies and Gents.

Well, I got back from Seattle OK - and now I have to tell you all about it!

If you don't like words, all the pictures are in the gallery here.

So. To start at the beginning... Drove myself up to IAH ('Intercontinental Airport Houston' I believe) and parked in the cheapo parking lot (only 6 bucks a day - pretty good for airport parking!). On to the shuttle bus that took me merrily to Terminal E for check in for Continental, the USA's least worst airline. I had crammed everything into a carry on bag, so already had my boarding pass (printed at work) so proceeded to get undressed for security as is the norm nowadays. I was airside in just a couple of minutes, so now I had over an hour to kill before boarding.

Thanks to my contribution to Global warming in the past year, (Chile 3 times, Round the world once, and back to Europe - oh - I don't know - 6 times) British Airways had rewarded me with their 'Person Most Likely To Create a Grape Growing Industry in Britain' card, otherwise known as the Gold Tier of the BA Executive Club. This is rather splendid, as I was informed in the glitzy literature that accompanied the aformentioned card that it could be used to get in to BA lounges regardless of who I was travelling with that day. I decided to give this a try, and wondered through to terminal D where I found the BA lounge had been commandeered by China Airways. Never one to be put off that easily, I entered anyway and was duly directed to the bar where I partook of some Gin and Tonic, and some nice sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Not to shabby. I also collected up all the british newspapers I could find (they'd come in on that day's BA flights) and fed them into my already overstuffed bag.

So the hour of waiting passed rather nicely (stuffing newspapers into bag), and so I boarded the Continental Jet to Seattle, 4 and a half hours away. Due to the 2 hour time difference, it was 11:30pm when we reached Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and I headed straight for the Hertz rental area. BHP has a deal with Hertz, and therefore if you make a reservation on their website, your name simply appears on a display screen, and you just go to the numbered bay next to your name. There you find your car, with the keys in the ignition and the contract all signed and sealed hanging from the rear view mirror. Very quick and simple - I was driving out of the airport within 20 minutes of landing, and spent the next 20 minutes driving in circles to find the hotel thanks to my trusty GPS having the wrong address in its database. Ah well.

Saturday dawned with an overcast sky (Seattle gets millions of inches of rain a year), but undaunted I headed south and then Northwest bound for Olympic National Park. I crossed over the Tacoma Narrows (site of the infamously wobbly bridge that wobbled itself to destruction in a great example of resonance), and passed through thick forests of evergreen trees for much of the route.

Finally, Olympic National Park hove in to view (what the hell is hove anyway - I'm not even sure its a real word???) , and I wound my way upwards to over 4,000 feet (I think). We hit the snowline, which made for a nice walk through the forests, with meltwater streams rushing off downhill. There was a lot of spiky mountainy snowy foresty stuff going on, which made for a great contrast to Houston. These mountains are not volcanic - just your common or garden 'plate crashing into plate' type.

Next stop was the fairly remote northwest corner of the USA (apart from Alaska of course), but halfway there the car dropped out of cruise control and the 'check engine' light came on. I pulled over, and checked that the engine was still there, and it was, so I carried on for a bit. The light resolutely failed to turn off however, and I was a little concerned about heading further away from civilisation in a car that may well cease to provide motive force. In desperation, I looked in the manual that said that I should return the car to a dealer immediately, not drive it anywhere, and not tow it anywhere either. With this particularly helpful bit of advice in my head, I proceeded to drive it 150 miles back to Seattle at 70mph. Still keen on a little bit of touristing, I cut off the rather large detour through Tacoma, and took the ferry across Puget sound to Seattle. This was quite good fun, and I was rewarded with 40 minutes of fat tourists with cameras taking pictures of each other. I joined in a little with the photo taking bit, but drew the line at the getting fat bit.

So, back in Seattle, I went back to the airport and swapped out the car for another. This time they gave me a Subaru Mega-Guzzler XLT which had only 96 miles on the clock. I took it out for a test drive to the Northlake Tavern and Pizza House which had been reccomended to me by a workmate in Houston. I spent the drive back swerving across multiple lanes of Seattle's freeway system as I was playing with the Satellite Radio system - never had the opportunity before.

Sunday saw me head south, and away from Seattle towards Mount St Helens, the real reason for the trip. This mountain blew it's top about 7 days before I was born

Fifty-seven people were killed; and 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km)
of railways and 185 miles (300 km) of highway were destroyed.
--Wikipedia

Trees were laid flat up to 17 miles away. For those that don't know, it's lava dome that had been steadily growing collapsed in a landslide on it's northen flank, causing a huge relese of pressure, analogous to taking the cap off a hot car radiator, just with more lava involved. Apparantly, if you'd been standing on the ridge where the visitor centre is today, and held up a metre square frame, 60 tonnes of rock would have flown though it.

Every Second.

For Three Minutes.

That's a lot.

Thanks to the high peaks, the crater itself was largely shrouded in cloud, but I took a walk for a couple of miles along the ridge towards Spirit Lake which was partially filled in by the mudslides and pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The land even now looks very harsh, with thick layers of ash cut deeply by streams and rivers. You can see a layer of dead trees - big ones - 150 feet tall some of them - that are buried by a couple of metres of debris. Quite amazing, and all very recent. The volcano is still active of course, and a new lava dome is growing as we speak.

The walk took me along the first ridge that the blast would have hit - about 5 miles or 3 seconds away from the crater. The ridge is pretty well blasted, with fallen trees and very hummocky ground that was basically formed by the debris being deposited on the lee side. It was pretty cold too, with the snowline not far away, making me glad I brought a decent hat and gloves! As it was almost exactly 27 years to the day that Mt St Helens last erupted, the amount of snow was possibly similar which explains the huge amount of meltwater that would have been caused by the eruption that in turn created massive mudflows that washed down rivers, destroying bridges and property many miles away.

I spent the night about an hour away from the Volcano, and on Monday thought I would head around it's south side for a different view. This time the drive was very different, travelling through thick forest all the way, and winding my way up roads for hours! Unfortunately the spur road to a viewpoint 5 miles from the crater was still closed due to snow, but I got the odd glimpse of the peak in the breaking clouds. The mountain is surprisingly steep - just like you'd expect a decent volcano to look!

I ended up in Mount Ranier National Park on the way back to Seattle, I had roughtly planned to drive through the park, but it turned out all through roads were closed as several sections had been washed away due to the huge amount of rain in 2006. These are not little dirt roads by the way, but fairly reasonable paved highways. Therefore I went on a shortish walk around in the forests, and wondered down to Silver Falls in the southeast corner of the park. The river was full, carrying meltwater, but even so it was flowing in a canyon that had a good 5 metres from rim to river. It was therefore pretty amazing that a footbridge crossing this canyon was still in the process of being repaired, as it too had been damaged by flooding. An incredible amount of water was involved!

It was time to head back to the airport for my 5:50pm flight, and the journey out of the mountains was uneventful. Dropped off the car, checked in and found a BA lounge in which to sit and wait.

We took off under clear skies, and had the most incredible view of Mount Ranier off our left wingtip about 10 minutes after takeoff. The pilot announced it's imminent arrival, and said that it would only be 10 miles off our wing, and as we were still climbing up to cruise, although we were already at 13,000 feet, the peak would be higher than us, topping out at 14,410 feet. It was pretty amazing to see such a huge mountain so close! Got some good photos though! You could see the entire volcano, with some stunning views of the snowfields and glaciers.

Arrived back in Houston just before midnight local time, and the plane promptly had it's windows cloaked in condensation as we touched down thanks to the killer humidity! Nice. Home and in bed shortly after 1am for a short week back at work.

On being old...

2007-05-25T20:53:00.001-05:00

Today, I am mostly being 27. That almost sounds like I should be responsible, have a house, wife and maybe even a kid or two, but seeing as I am still working on learning how to look after myself, all the above seems a trifle hasty.

So, instead of being responsible, I have booked myself on a flight to Seattle where I plan to spend the memorial day long weekend stomping and driving through the cascades.

As I have not been up there before, I am really looking forward to it. Mount st Helens especially - such a great example of an exploding mountain! More to follow...
--
Sam Clayton
www.samclayton.net

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry.

Drunk Bishops and French Weddings

2007-05-12T13:08:00.000-05:00

Freinds, Romans, Countrymen. Lend me your ears. (and 500,000 pounds if you have it so I can buy an apartment in London's docklands...)

I am on a plane (for a change), doing my bit for climate change so I can realise my dream of growing grapes in Britain. This time coming back on BA 2027 to Houston from London, and before that Toulose, France. Why? Well, my Token French Freind (TFF) was getting hitched, and I thought I would drop in on the proceedings. Why do I have a token French freind I hear you say? Well, it's annoying, but what can you do? You try and dislike a nation for making better cheese, having faster trains, making wine out of grapes rather than nettles and God-knows what else as well as having the impertinence to shoot one of our Kings in the eye. It seems simple, but then no, they go and make freinds with you and then you end up at their wedding.

To make matters worse, they are all so damn nice it's not funny.

Ah well.

So, TFF currently works for BHP Billiton, but in our London office, and I met him whilst he was over in Houston on an internship some time ago. I headed over to London last week, stayed the Thursday night, and headed on to Toulouse on Friday evening, getting in late, but not late enough to prevent a couple of Guinesses with TFF. My persuasion to drop the whole idea and run away before going through with the marriage failed, so on Saturday afternoon we all convened at the Capitole in the very middle of Toulouse for the civil ceremony. It is an incredible building, nicely decked out in the Tricolour, and with an ornately painted interior. Quite amazing place really.

After the ceremony, we headed out to a Chataux for the reception - not your mind's eye image of many spires and turrets (just the two) - more analogous with an English stately home, but of course with better wine (and faster trains)...

As you might expect, we were greeted with champagne, and dived into the meal with beautiful wine, a starter of smelly cheese (not it's real name!), duck (local speciality) followed by the best Foie Gras I have ever had, then followed by more duck in a crusty but flaky pastry shell with potatoes and mushrooms. I think there were other courses too, but the wine was, well, flowing... After all this we had a desert (I think - can't remember!) and then cheese (of course). Then we had more wine, lots more champagne, and danced (or in my case jumped around the dancefloor looking like a right prat) until the early hours of the morning.

Rather brilliantly, TFF and Spouse had obtained some cowboy hats, and proceeded to open the dancefloor with a line dance in light of their impending move to Houston! This went down very well, and was scarily very good!

So, back to Toulouse on Sunday afternoon, and flew back out to London at 7am on Monday morning.

I once again had a great time in London. Met up with Mum and Tom 'n Lindi on Thurday, and we had a great meal at Qui Lon, the best Indian restaurant that I know on the planet. It's at 41 Buckingham Gate, Victoria if you're in the area.

We had a really nice stomp round the capital this time - it was the first time I had been over to Bank, and walked round the Lloyd's building before finding ourselves at the foot of the Swiss Re tower (more popularly called 'The Gerkin'). I quite fancy working around here for a bit - very cool!

We also stumled upon Southwark cathedral just around the corner from the replica Globe Theatre which was a surprisingly interesting place. Chaucer and Shakespere (or at least what's left of them, which presumably is not a lot) are interred here. Apparantly Shakespere was buried during the morning, which was unusual for the time, but most of the mourners had to get back to go on stage for the matinee performances! You can just imagine them all pulling out their sundials and checking the time ("You know, I really have to run..."). Also of note was a plaque with the names of the past and present Bishops of Southwark. The current incumbent is the Rt Rev Tom Butler who really should be known as Tom Butler the Lashed, after his excellent attempt at a christmas party last year.

Also for the first time went into Tate Modern. Nice view from the cafe up on the top floor, but the paintings were a little bit of a dissapointment. I think most of them were not finished, while others were obviously good attempts at showcasing the work of local primary schools. As you can tell, I need to work on my vocation of being an art critic, but I think I have got my point across pretty well in this case.

Once again, another great little trip over to Europe.

Quick Flight

2007-04-29T18:45:00.000-05:00

Well, the weather was looking hopeful on Saturday evening so I headed out to the airport for an evening flight. It's not getting dark until 8pm here now, so I had rented the Diamond DA-20 once again from 6 'til 9pm.

I departed northeast from KDWH, and headed over the Woodlands and just south of Lone Star Executive (KCXO). The ride was smooth, thanks to the cooling air, and the light Diamond soon reached 1,700 feet (to remain under the Houston Class B airspace) and accelerated to 125 knots. After Lone Star, the class B airspace begins to rise up until it dissapears entirely about 10 miles further on, so I climbed up to 5,500 feet and flew over the Sam Houston National Forest until crossing the shoreline of Lake Livingston, a large reservoir.

It was only another 15 minutes or so to Lufkin from here, so I pressed on and began a 500 fpm (feet per minute) decsent as instructed by the GPS. This set me up for a nice left downwind for runway 15, and I touched town uneventfully and taxied to the ramp.

With sunset minutes away, I didn't linger on the ground for too long, and instead took off to head back towards Houston. It's always great to see sunset from an aircraft, and I made a touch and go landing at Livingston. By the way, I should point out that a touch and go is a landing where you touch down, but then immediately go flaps up, and throttle full for an immediate takeoff.

I turned right to leave the airport area to the South, which took me immediately over the lake again, where the was the odd boat cutting through the water.

By the time I had reached KDWH, it was 30 minutes after sunset and pretty much dark. This makes the landing a little more difficult as your depth perception is poor in low light conditions. This means you can't see how high you are above the runway, which calls for a slightly different landing technique. I basically set up in a nice glide to the runway, and then once I think I am within 10 feet begin a slow flare that slows my descent yet further, and I hold this until the wheels touch the ground.

One thing to be very careful of is to not to decend too low on approach. For this reason airports usually have some type of indicator that will give you a visual indication of glideslope angle. At Hooks on 17R it is a series of 4 lights on the right of the runway. All white means you are too high, all red means you are too low. I followed it down with 2 red and 2 white which means you are on glideslope.

As I had not flown after dark for some time, I made this landing a touch and go, and went around in the pattern once more. The second landing was executed with no problems, and I asked the controller to make the next one a full stop. I was cleared to land on 17R, and I called it a night.

Great fun, and a great aircraft to fly.

Frozen Big Bend Pictures

2007-04-16T00:10:00.000-05:00

Dumped some pictures up from the Icy Wastes of West Texas: http://picasaweb.google.com/sam.d.clayton/BigBendApril2007.

Ice and Sun

2007-04-11T19:08:00.000-05:00

A Belated Happy Easter to Y'all!

Just got back from work, but it's nice and sunny so thought I'd pop down and sit by the pool and type this. Luckily, thanks to BHPB, I have a snazzy new Bluetoothy-BlackBerry-with-Camera so I can show you a picture of where I am -->

I have lots of things to tell you about, and even an audience question which I expect you to answer using the comments facility below.

So first things first.

I went to get my car back from the Ford place - needed a new bumper after some crazy driver drove into me whilst they were overtaking 2 lanes of stopped cars on the wrong side of the road. They never stopped to let me get their insurance details, so the $800 is coming out of my pocket which stung somewhat. Anyway - whilst at the dealership I went to have a peek at the new cars. I have gone off the idea of a Mustang now - not terribly practical in Texas - I mean I only ever want to travel to the airport or the shops, and any long trips are usually to Big Bend where a convertible doesn't have the clearance for the backcountry trails. So another SUV is required.

Ford have brought out a Hybrid version of the Escape for 2008 (I have the regular petrol-driven 2001 model right now), so I took that for a spin around the block. It's really nice - very quiet, but still as roomy as the regular Escape but has the benefit of getting 500 miles on a tank of fuel rather than 330 miles which I get at the moment with my 3.0 litre V6.

It also has the coolness factor of being a bit new and high tech.

Driving it is funny - until you get to about 25 mph, the petrol engine remains off, and the car runs on batteries alone. If you put your foot down a little harder however, the petrol engine instantly turns on and gives you extra power as needed. The batteries are recharged automatically when you use the brakes. Very clever, and especially around town saves a lot of fuel and of course carbon emissions.

Downsides are that it costs about $5000 more than the equivalent petrol engined version, and has a little less power which may be an issue for overtaking, on hills and on backcountry trails, but I have no hard data on that.

Also, I work for an oil company, so may possibly get fired if I buy a Hybrid :-)

Plus sides are: vast amounts of moral high ground in that I get to drive around with an eco-warrior under the hood / bonnet, I get 200 extra miles on a tank of gas, and there is a $3000 tax rebate at the end of the year for Hybrids. That means the financial difference (disregarding fuel savings) is closer to $2k, which is becoming more sensible...

So, what do YOU think? Eco-warrior, or Gas Guzzler? Comments please.

(Note that those of you who suggest the Hybrid will need to contribute about $300 apiece.)

So, in my newly repaired Escape, I headed across to Big Bend for Easter. The weather dropped very cold indeed, and hit freezing at about 4000 feet elevation. This is pretty surprising for Texas in April. The result though was some spectacular views of the National Park covered in ice. The accumulation was only about 5mm or so, but it coated spines of cacti, needles on the pinion pine and juniper trees and spring flowers in a transparent icy shell. Very cool.

As it's spring, and there has been a fair bit of rain this year, the desert was flowering with all manner of nice cacti to look at and take pictures of. The Yucca had great big white bundles of flowers, and the Agave, Sotol and Nolina were all at it too. I like the ocotillo cactus - big daggers of green with bright red flame like flowers on the end - very cool. Pictures to come, but try googling: http://images.google.com/images?&q=cacti+big+bend.

Slightly less cool was the trip back to Houston. I drove down the mountains, out of the park, and headed north. The road climbs gently all the way to Fort Stockton, 100 miles away, at which point I was back at 4000' and in ice. The white stuff gradually encroached on the Interstate, with the bridges getting covered in ice first, then the hard shoulder, the overtaking lane, until I was trapped in two ruts with crunchy ice everywhere. The precipitation instantly froze when it hit the car, and the front grille, the lights and the bonnet were covered in quarter of an inch of ice too. The aerial and wing mirrors were funny - the former became over an inch thick as it accumulated ice, and the latter developed long icicles streaming backwards. The windscreen wipers that usually conform to the curve of the windscreen became rigid and frozen, so failed to clear the screen.

Of course in such conditions the 80 mph speed limit was not practical, and at times we were down to 35 mph, which is a hell of a slow journey when you're making a 500 mile trip. Although it was pretty impressive, I was glad when after 250 miles the road began the slow decent towards San Antonio and the ice stopped accumulating, first on the road, and then began melting off the car. It still took a further 200 miles before the ice was entirely gone from the aerial though.

Oh, and thanks Arminadinnerjacket for letting us have our marines back. Much obliged. Anyone for tea?

Brief Catch Up...

2007-03-25T00:07:00.000-05:00

Jesus. It's March.

Since I last put fingers to keyboard to finely craft a post here, I have bought Christmas presents, got on a plane back to the UK, made it as far as Gatwick before transferring to a British Airways Fog Busting Bus to Manchester, seen the family for Christmas, even seen the Germans (Shout out to top cousins Ashley and Lewis!), before travelling back to London, spending a week there for work, travelling back to Houston, settling back into the routine for a brief 2 weeks before starting a new job, doing a little local flying before travelling to Geneva and onwards to Morzine for a Ski Holiday with the parents and Tom 'n Megan. Back to Houston a week later, and the following on board another plane to Santiago, Chile for a quick work gig, back to Houston for 2 and a half weeks to pick up the new job for a bit before back to Santiago again.

I have been back in Houston for nearly a week now, and have just about unpacked and got my apartment back to looking reasonably presentable again, although the odd sock still loiters under cushions awaiting a trip to the washing machine.

So, yes, it's been busy, and I've had little time to get bored, although have just recently been thinking about spending vast amounts of money that I don't have on some property. We have an ancronym at work - OPM. It stands for "Other People's Money" and I think it sounds a great idea. I should head down to have a word with the nice folks at Wells Fargo Bank about getting myself a mortgage. I just think that I should get some tangible assets behind me.

With this new-found ambition, I headed out on Friday (day off) to have a little look at some of the new apartments that are being built near work. There's one that I really liked, but looks like I slightly misjudged the market - it's $720,000, which needless to say is just a little more than I can afford right now! Ah well... Back to the drawing board... There are lots of lower priced properties around here too, a little further out of town, but Houston is a bit weird for holding real estate value over time - as there are no planning restrictions or zoning laws, new developments appear all the time, so areas can drop in value quite substantially after as little as 5 years. Not what I want in an investment.

So maybe I should just keep renting - it's a great for no hassle...

Anyway - back to the opening paragraph...

Skiing this year was in Morzine, not far from Cluses and Geneva. We had a great self-catering Chalet on the slopes on the edge of Morzine Village and right next to the lifts. As the snow in the Alps was pretty bad this year, we were lucky to be able to ski from the door, but we could and did all week. We had a huge dump of snow one night which made for one of the best powder days I've ever had the following morning. The holiday was marred somewhat by Mum managing to wreck her cruciate ligaments whilst getting off a chairlift on the first day. A really annoying injury, and potentially quite serious, necessitating an emergency evacuation from the slopes and an ambulance to a clinic where X-Rays were duly taken, and hundreds of Euros extracted for crutches, a leg brace and various drugs. Recovery is proceeding well, but these things are slow.

The Alps really are amazing, and it's great that we've got the opportunity to go most years.

Once back in Houston, I only had 3 days back at work before heading off to Santiago for another session speaking about Petroleum to the Graduate Programme. Again, it went down really well, and I had a great time, this time spending a lot of time pounding the streets of Santiago. The city is really busy, bustling, with plentiful parks and fountains, but at night the parties start late and go on until daylight. I went to see the statue of the Virgen (yes, that's how they spell it!) Mary standing atop San Cristóbal hill. She looks out over the city of Santiago which sprawls along the foothills of the Andes. The statue is partly the work of French sculptor Bartholdi, of the US Statue of Liberty fame.

I repeated the trip just last week, this time spending Saturday there as well, which was yet another opportunity to see more of the place that I had before.

GUEST BLOG SPOT: Taipei, or not Taipei: that is the question

2007-03-08T21:39:00.000-06:00

The Editor is pleased to present for your browsing pleasure, the first ever Guest Blog at SamClayton.net. This piece, expertly crafted by Mr Ian Hayes who has just left Houston for a New Life in Malaysia, tells of the trials and tribulations of the journey. Rumours that Ian was forced to leave the USA due to excessive mud-worrying are unfounded.
With apologies to Will Shakespere...

By Ian Hayes, Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Taipei, or not Taipei: that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The lack of airline lounge at the stopover point,
Or to take the lengthy Atlantic route in comfort,
And by opposing end them? To drink: to relax;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the many thousand miles
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To drink, to relax;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of business class comfort what dreams may come
When we have shuffled through the Taipei terminal,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long a journey;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of lounge comfort, the dream's delay,
The insolence of duty free and the masses
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare i-Pod? who would entertainment bear,
To grunt and sweat under a humid heat,
But that the dread of something after passport control,
The undiscover'd lounge from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make snobery of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Air Malaysia! Naff, in thy orisons
Be all your sins remember'd.

Thanksgiving Flying 2006

2006-11-25T17:38:00.000-06:00

For the past couple of years, I have headed out of town for the Thanksgiving break which runs from Thursday to Sunday at the end of November, creating a great 4-day weekend suitable for all sorts of travel.

For a change, this year I stayed in Houston for the day itself, heading round to some friends for a full thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings - great!

On Friday morning I headed to the airport and took command of a Diamond DA20. It's a cool. modern looking aircraft, low wing, fighter-jet canopy and a single 125 horsepower engine. I'd just got checked out in in the week before, and it flies fast, climbs well (much better than the Cessna 152 and even the more powerful 172) and has some nice new toys, such as a Garmin GPS and traffic avoidance system.

After preflighting and getting clearance to taxi from the controller, I headed for 17-Left for departure. Due to traffic, I was cleared to 17-Right at Charlie for takeoff, so fprward went the throttle, and I began the takeoff roll. Within seconds I was at 45 knots, and lifting of the ground, seconds later at 70 knots and in a 1000 feet per minute climb! I turned right about 100 degrees to get established on my now familiar westerly heading, and stayed low, below 2000 feet until I was clear of the Houston airspace.

I headed out, past Austin, seeing other aircraft on my GPS screen which really helps with safety, and flew over the hill country to Enchanted Rock. A turn to the south saw me on the approach to Fredericksburg where I landed for fuel. It was only a brief stop, and I turned south-west to land at Leakey, where I was met by a veritable busload of work colleagues and friends. Thanks to the speed enjoyed as a pilot, it was still early, and the usual 5 hour car journey had taken me under 2 hours. There was therefore plenty of time to have lunch, sit by the Rio Frio go kayaking and locate a boatload of driftwood for the fire. I'd brought some steaks and red wine along, so we had a great BBQ that evening. Excellent!

The following morning we headed down to Garner State Park for a bit of a wander round - we walked up to the high point, and were rewarded with some great views of the Frio Canyon, the trees resplendent in the fall colours (getting carried away now, I realise that...), and once again had lunch by the river.

Back to the airport at 3pm, and whilst fellow brits John and Viv had to head back to Houston in their plane, I had other plans and turned west once again. I flew over pretty remote terrain, keeping as always a watch for other aircraft, heading towards Alpine, quite some distance away.

I was also keeping a close watch on fuel consumption, as I was hoping to get all the way to Alpine without stopping, and the plane was burning about 6.5 gallons per hour. I'd already done a good 45 minutes of flying the day before, and several takeoffs and landings at Leakey, so reckoned I had about 15 gallons remaining at most at takeoff. This was confirmed with the fuel 'dipstick', and therefore I thought the 1 hour and 45 minutes flying time from Leakey to Alpine would use a little over 11 gallons rounding to at least 12 if I included the extra fuel for high power at takeoff. 3 gallons 'reserve' would take me about 30 minutes, therefore putting me right on the nose of the minimum legal reserve for day flying. I resolved to land at my only alternate option, Terrell County, about 50 miles closer than Alpine if I was behind schedule by more than 5 minutes.

As it turned out, I managed power and altitude pretty well, and was slightly ahead of schedule at Terrell Co., so continued on to Alpine, skipping over the peaks of the Glass Mountains to lengthening shadows, and touched down at 5:30pm, exactly as scheduled.

After refueling, spending the night in Alpine, and being transported back to the Airport by the world's nicest taxi company (Desert Willow Limo & Taxi, (432) 837-7178 or (432) 294-0555 if you're in the area) I preflighted and departed south in the early Sunday morning sky, headed for Big Bend. I followed the highway towards Lajitas, a small border town, and the familiar sight of the Chisos mountains and Santa Elena Canyon drew closer. Pilots are requested to remain more than 2000' above the surface of National Parks, so I respected this, and did some circles and swoops around the park. I've got a fleet of good photos that I need to get up here... I circled up to over 12,000 feet and got a great view of the Chisos Basin below.

Leaving the park behind, following at first the road north to Marathon was aided by a 40 knot tailwind meaning I was covering the ground pretty quickly at almost 200 mph. I was planning on refuelling at Terrel County before heading west back to Houston, but this was thwarted when I was 30 miles away by a low cloud deck. I couldn't safely get under the cloud at this point due to terrain, so diverted to Fort Stockton which was reporting clear skies. I found the airport completely deserted, so after fuelling at the self-service pumps I went inside to check the weather. It was very strange - a large municipal aiport, with pilots lounge, computerised flight planning and weather was just devoid of all life! It was like the set of some weird B movie...

I checked the weather, saw lots of cloud in between me and Houston, but probably high enough to allow me safe passage underneath, so thus informed I headed out to the aircraft once again, climbed in, secured the canopy, started the engine and taxied out for departure to the east. I flew merrily on, following I-10, planning on 'airport hopping', flying from airport to airport to give me the option of landing if the weather was looking dodgy ahead, or even turning back to the airport behind me if necessary. Because I-10 is a major interstate crossing the USA, there are towns every 50 - 80 miles even in this remote section.

As it happened, I did not have to land, and even got some nice flying in the clear blue on top of the clouds before the deck began to seal itself beneath me. You can see from my Google Earth flying track of the route where I executed a neat maneuver to get below the clouds at one point.

After landing at Kerrville to refuel, I headed out on the last 183 nautical mile jaunt to Houston, flying much of the time up high, far above the clouds below. It's clearly the way to travel.

By the time I returned the plane to it's base, I had logged 11.4 hours of flight time, and covered 2000km - a little more than Land's End to John o' Groats (and back)

Media calls Senate for Democrats

2006-11-08T22:35:00.000-06:00

Great news here in Americaland... The Republicans seem to have lost control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1994.

Whilst it won't solve many of the current problems, it does demonstrate that enough people voiced their opinion loudly enough to make the powers that be sit up, and who knows, maybe even take notice...

Seems like that it's all hinging on Virginia.

From Dallas

2006-10-19T08:16:00.000-05:00

So, a mere 36 hours after arriving in Chile, I’m now back over it heading north on American Airlines back to Dallas / Fort Worth.

I will at this point mention that after careful deliberation and thought (and vast amounts of experience – well 1 flight anyway) that American Airlines are THE worst airline I’ve been on.
The planes look old, the interiors are scrappy, and there is not even a personal video system in Business Class. One redeeming feature is you do get a personal DVD system with a selection of discs, but it’s all a bit naff really.

I know I’m being picky (and God forbid, Ameicanised?) but I’d be annoyed if it was MY money I was spending on this ticket.

They’re so cheap that they taxi around the airports with only one engine, turning the other one just before takeoff (and immediately after landing). This does save fuel, but I always like knowing that both engines have had a reasonable 10 minutes of running before propelling a speeding hunk of Aluminium down the runway. I’m sure it’s all perfectly safe, but I am not entirely convinced. An engine failing at takeoff is exceedingly rare, once started, jets tend to keep running. However, if you start the engine at the beginning of your takeoff roll, well… Put it this way – it’s the worst time to have an engine failure!

If other airlines (like Southwest here in the USA, or British Airways back home) can turn a profit (and a good one) whilst having far superior service at the airport, in flight and using all the engines that have been strapped on all of the time, then I don’t see why American is different.

Anyway. Got that out of my system.

The food was good on the way back though – even if I snapped my plastic fork (why can all the other airlines have metal forks?), and they confiscated my glass of wine without refilling it.

Anyway.

Hmmm.

Santiago was great. I didn’t get to see that much of it, but the approach to landing was spectacular with the great view of the snow-capped Andes off one wing. Santiago sits up against the Andes, with the coast some 90 minutes drive away. The city looks like many others do when you literally fly in and fly out, but there was a nice mix of old and new buildings with a major European influence.

I was collected at the airport by a guy with my name on a board, and whisked off to the Hotel Atton where I showered and had a couple of hours sleep before hooking in to work.

The morning session I was presenting the day after went pretty well – I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying I was covering the basics of the Petroleum business, and a bit of the history and economics.

You might like to try the Oil Exploration game at www.omv.com. Go to the site map, and in the first column under communication you’ll see a link to online games. It’s the top game in the list. Was useful to explain how the industry works.

A large proportion of the Graduates were Spanish speaking, mainly from the minerals side of the business, and therefore everything I said was translated on the fly by two interpreters sat in a booth at the back of the room. The translation was then transmitted only a few seconds behind me via an earpiece. It was impressive how fast the translation happened, and very strange to hear your words in Spanish mere seconds after you said them! Also, when I was asked questions in Spanish, I heard the English translation in my earpiece. It’s like the united nations!

All in all the session went very well with some excellent questions and feedback, so I was off the hook and en-route back to the airport by 7:30pm. I get to Houston sometime around 9am tomorrow, just in time for a day of meetings! But then a week’s holiday! Excellent!

I’m going to be back in the UK for Chrimbo, and in London once again from the 3rd – 12th of January. Maybe see some of you there…