Evolution of Dance

This is the funniest damn thing ever. You can find out more at http://www.evolutionofdance.com. I got this off of YouTube.

Home again

James and I got in late last night and I have a lot of pictures and stories to tell from the rest of the trip. Keep checking back as I'll up updating as fast as I can. :)

Goodnight and Goodbye Key West

Tonight is our last night in Key West. I don't think that Beau (the resort cat) could have expressed it any better. After 5 days of rest and relaxation, it's time to go home.

Lunch at Sunset Key

On our last day in Key West, James and I headed off to lunch with Scott and Alfonso another couple we met in Key West at Sunset Key. Sunset Key is a small private key just across the water from Key West. The Hilton owns a very nice resort on the island including Latitudes Beach Cafe where we had lunch. The picture below shows us coming into Mallory Square where a gigantic Disney Cruise ship was docked.Here are a couple more shots of the Disney Cruise ship. Waiting for our shuttle to Sunset Key was pretty amusing. There were families streaming off the ship and some parents who looked quite happy to have left the kids with day care and gotten off a boat of screaming, vacationing children.
The restaurant itself was very nice and the food was pretty good; expensive, but everything in Key West is. I would recommend this place for a nice, relaxing lunch if you're not averse to a quick boat ride. Here is a shot of the outdoor dining area.
A shot of James and I near the beach at the restaurant.
And now from right to left, Alfonso, Scott, James, and yours truly.
Here is the view of the beach and restaurant on our way back to Key West.

Six Years Since Mangoes

Six years ago in October 2000, James took a picture of me at Mangoes, a well-known restaurant on Duvall St. in Key West. Here is the before and after. Side note: Isn't it amazing the people we capture in our own photographs? On how many blogs, walls, desks, are you in the background of a fond memory of someone else? :)

October 2000

May 2006

The Beech 1900D

Today James and I are off to Key West! We are hopping two Continental Connection flights from Orlando to Miami to Key West. The reason I'm blogging about this is it's my first ride on the Beech 1900D which is a pretty common regional airplane for new commercial pilots to start out on. In fact, our first officer from Orlando to Key West looked like he was all of 22 or 24, was cute as a button, and was flying an airplane that I was still getting comfortable even riding in (you feel every bump in the road in these things). Here is a photo (not mine) of a Beech 1900D.Here is a very tired looking me sitting all the way in the back in row 9.The flight was actually really fun. These things only climb up to somewhere between 10 and 15,000 feet for the short flight. In those levels, your still hanging around in the clouds, feeling every bump in the air, and getting a pretty nice view of the surrounding area. Here is a really neat picture of the Kennedy Space Center that James managed to snap after we took off in Orlando. The flight from Miami to Key West was only about 45 minutes and was just gorgeous. The water is such and amazing color of blue and turquoise and the whole way you are seeing the shadow of the clouds and shallow water sea floors. The drive to Key West is really pretty, but I highly recommend the flight down to the little Key West airport if you can swing it.

Embry-Riddle Daytona Beach, FL

After a fantastic three day visit with our friend Barnes in Phoenix, James and I were off to Daytona Beach Florida via Orlando. We were to visit the main campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University after visiting their second campus in Prescott, AZ. The map below shows where Daytona Beach is in relation to Orlando.

Now I should probably start off by mentioning that it was a depressing, gray, drizzly day in Daytona Beach, and it was actually 85 degrees and sunny back home when we visited. However, Daytona Beach is not my kind of town. Daytona Beach didn't impress me nearly as much as Prescott, AZ did. Which is strange because Prescott is more isolated and smaller than Daytona Beach is. Plus, Daytona Beach is only about an hour from Orlando which everyone knows is next to Disney Mecca. Daytona Beach also failed the two tests we came up with for me while in Prescott (see my post from Prescott, AZ about my criteria for choosing a place to live). Without ranting about it too much, it just wasn't for me. That and the admissions counselor at Riddle made the fact that Volusia county Florida is the fourth poorest county in Florida a selling point for its cheap housing. I wouldn't have thought that factoid as a selling point.

The campus tour itself wasn't bad. Our tour was done by a nice student from Oregon. A couple of things that did strike me in the tour were that unlike in Prescott, we weren't allowed into any of the classrooms or facilities (except the simulation building). At the Prescott campus, we went into all of the classrooms/labs/shops where at Daytona Beach, we just walked the halls looking into dark rooms. The Daytona Beach campus did have a pretty impressive "super computer" on display which you can see below.

The other thing that struck me as really strange about the Daytona Beach campus was that we didn't even go out to the flight line. At the Prescott campus, we went out to the flight line, grabbed keys for an airplane, and took a look. At the Daytona Beach campus, we just looked out of buildings and around the outside, fenced, edge of the line. Pretty disappointing tour of the aircraft for those who flew across the country to tour the campus.

Anyway, needless to say, the Prescott campus impressed me much more than the Daytona Beach campus did. So my school decision just got a little easier: if I do go to Riddle it'll be at Prescott.
The next couple pictures are of the area around or hotel. Nothing too fancy, just a nice little view and a picture of me on the boardwalk. Our next stop is Key West, FL which James and I are much more excited about so we were pretty happy to get outta Daytona Beach.

Ah, we're just waiting for our pilot...

Today James and I were off to Daytona Beach Florida. Our friend Barnes dropped us off at Phoenix Sky Harbour for our flight to Orlando via Houston on her way to work. I have to say that flying Continental wasn't that bad; that is until we reached Houston. When we finally got off the plane, we turned the corner at Houston Bush and found that our flight was delayed two hours. Needing to kill time, James and I headed off to a pub in the airport for some fine fried Texas food. Me being as paranoid as I am, I decided to run out and check our flight status. Good thing I did, the flight moved up to 4:30 from 6:00. We scarfed down the rest of our food and booked it over to our gate. By the time we got there, they were already boarding our rows. What happened next is probably one of the funniest things that I've experienced on an airplane. Over the PA: "Folks, just to give you and update on our status, we're all set and ready to go, ah, we're just waiting for our pilot." I offered my assistance as a private pilot who’s never flown anything larger than a Beech Duchess, but the folks on the Boeing 757-200, were not impressed. After an hour and 45 minutes of bumpy Gulf of Mexico flying, we were in Orlando. I grabbed the bags, waited in the baggage claim for James who was picking up the car, and was surprised to see him pull up in a Chevy PT Cruiser (they were out of our size and no we didn't pay extra for it). Those who know us will find the image of us driving a PT Cruiser very amusing. After a good hour of driving we arrived in (and I use the term loosely) beautiful Daytona Beach Shores. More about ERAU Daytona Beach tomorrow.

Lookout Mountain

Yesterday, James and I hiked up Lookout Mountain near Barnsey's place in Phoenix to watch the sunset. There is a pretty amazing 360 degree view of the valley and the city. Below are some of the nicer pictures from the sunset. It was still about 100 degrees when we hiked up at 7pm. Boy it's hot here.

Embry-Riddle Prescott, AZ

Today James and I visited Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Prescott Arizona campus. This is the first stop on the two stop tour to help me figure out if I want to go to this school. Riddle's Daytona Beach Florida campus tour is next week. I was admitted into the aerospace engineering program at the Daytona Beach campus a few weeks ago. Now I'm off to figure out if I could live in either place.

Prescott Arizona is about 100 miles north of Phoenix and is a pretty pleasant drive if you can ignore all the Arizona drivers on your ass or flying down the freeway at 100 mph. The map below will show you where Prescott is in relation to Phoenix.Prescott is a cute little town and I could see myself living there. You can find out more about Prescott on the city's web site: http://www.cityofprescott.net/. The web site also has a bunch of neat photos taken by local photographers.

James managed to sum up my requirements for a location to live in two conditions: first, the location doesn't frighten me to my core, and second, it doesn't overtly piss me off. Happily, Prescott did neither. Also, on the plus side for Prescott, it's out of the valley floor where Phoenix is, and it was about 10-20 degrees cooler than Phoenix was today. It was in the mid-80's in Prescott, and while descending out of the mountains in the car back to Phoenix, the thermometer rose back up to 103 on the freeway. Yikes.

Once we got to Prescott, we stopped at Watson Lake Park to stretch and take in the scenery. Below are some really neat pictures of this park with all it's rock formations.We got to Riddle early, about 11am, and our tour was scheduled for 1pm. Fortunately the student doing the tours that day had no 11am and was able to take us early. A nice young fellow named Brian did the tour. He was only 20 (gulp) and was in one of the frats.
The tour included all of the usual stuff, classrooms, community centers, and so on, and because I marked that I was going to major in aerospace engineering, we got to check out a lot of the engineering facilities including wind tunnels, a small little single-stage turbine engine, and a couple of other full size engines that the engineering students play around with. Riddle has a nice computer set up in nearly all the classrooms (still using Win2k, but oh well) and they have a super neat weather room with a bunch of computers dedicated to gathering weather information. They also had a neat plasma on the wall that is ordinarily displaying worldwide satellite weather but was off since graduation was the week prior.

The best part of the tour was a trip over to the Prescott airport and a tour of Embry-Riddle's flight line facilities. This included a tour of the simulator building. Embry-Riddle's Prescott campus has several big sims for 172s and Piper Seminoles. The neat simulators were the ones with full mock-Cockpits and 180 degree projection screens. They also had several panel only simulators for procedure work. They also have an Airbus A320 simulator, but it wasn't available for me to see. Here's me checking out one of the Seminole simulators with the projection screens.After looking around in the simulator building, we went out to the flight line and I had a chance to check out the real thing.After the tour, we headed back into the downtown area of Prescott, and had lunch at a little Mexican place. Before we headed back to Phoenix, we strolled around the downtown area a bit, and the Yavapai County court house. In front is a statue dedicated to the rough riders.
Back in Phoenix we met up with Barnsey and spent some time by the pool. It was after all, still about 100 degrees.