A trip in our Plane to Tucson

Ok, so I'm gonna start by saying that this won't be too long because I have no pictures and since I'm not a great writer I won't bore y'all with a pictureless blogg.

For weeks I was excited to take the plane to Tucson and to see some of our Alaska buddies. Saturday morning Joe and I got up early (early for a couple with no kids on a Saturday) drove to New Braunsfels, loaded up the plane and set out for a 5.5-hour flight to Tucson. The day was beautiful and the flight was great...tailwinds almost the whole way and not too bumpy. We stopped in El Paso for a quick fill-up on fuel and landed in Tucson 2 hours later.

Harb met us at the plane and then we met up with Andrea and Ben for a few drinks at Harb & Teresa's place. It was a beautiful day in Tucson and we were with friends drinking beers...awww, how nice. After Harbs, Joe and I jumped in the Escape with the Fallins and headed to their house (aka our lodging for the weekend). THANKS, ANDREA! Later that evening we met up with a whole crew of people at a sandwich/beer place (I can't remember the name of it....something ending with "wiches") and had a great time chatting, catching up and meeting new people. Let's see if I can remember everyone's name...me, Joe, Andrea, Ben, HARB, Teresa, Fulda, Aslynn, Chris and 2 other guys. After an awesome dinner and a few drinks there we wandered to a nearby bar where we had another few drinks and then called it a night. Oh, wait...we didn't call it a night...(just remembered) we went to another bar with an old friend of Andrea's. This bar is where a lot of the roller derby girls hang out, and while I know it was a neat bar I was so incredibly tired that I don't even remember if I had a drink there or not. Hehehe, actually I think it was a combination of being tired and all of the drinks I had by that time. Ok, this is where we called it a night and headed in.

The day after I drink I like to workout, run...anything to give me a good sweat because it makes me feel so much better. I was being lazy so instead of going for a run I decided to do the Abs Roller. Usually, by the end of all of my sets on the abs roller I am a sweaty mess, but not this morning...I couldn't figure it out. That's when I learned something super crazy about Tucson. Andrea told me that due to the dryness you don't sweat as much there. I thought this was totally off the wall...I couldn't believe it. I thought it was so crazy that I had to put it to the ultimate test...so, I put on my running shoes, grabbed my iPod shuffle and took off out the door with Roxie for a run. I said it was going to be a short 10 minute run (since we were starving) but at 10 minutes I wasn't sweating, so I picked up the pace and ran another 10 minutes. I could not believe it...no sweating until I stopped running. I usually sweat within my first 3 steps on a run...20 minutes and nothing...how lovely is that. I felt like one of those girly girls that work out without sheding a drop of sweat. If you're one of those girls you make me sick. :-)
Anyways, after breakfast we went by Fulda's and checked out his place. I LOVE the new Fulda bar. It is off the hook! If you live in Tucson you know what I mean...if you don't...it's incredible. I'm so mad I didn't have my camera with me (yeah, crazy) or I'd have a pic to post for you. After Fulda's we went to a went to see roller derby because Andrea's friend from the night before was one of the referees and gave us 2 free tickets. It seemed pretty fun, or at least everyone else there seemed to be having a great time. As for me and Andrea, we had no idea what was going on so we stayed for a little while (long enought to see that Austin was probably going to win) and then took off. We ended the day with a cook-out at the Fallins awesome backyard using their brand spankin new grill.

So, the next morning Ben took us to the Airport where we met up with Harb again. Got the plane together and took off for TX. Oh, my gosh...talk about a bumpy ride. We had awesome tailwinds and our speed ranged from 130-165kt gs, but it was the freakin bumpiest ride ever. At one point we had so much wind from the ground pushing us up that the climbing needle was pegged all the way to the right. Then, all of the sudden we looked at the RPM gauge and the needle was all the way left...yeah, guess we have to put some money into getting that one fixed. The thing about that gauge is that you don't know when it'll go out on you until it does, but it's not a gauge that will really hurt anything if you finish a flight without it. The winds were so great that it got us home about 40 minutes faster than it took to get to Tucson.
A great weekend...I just wish my dumb butt had taken pictures.

I just remembered that I did take a couple pictures on the way home. Here's one of the RPM gauge messed up (it should be around the red line) and one of my honey. (BTW...how do you get a caption under the picture?)