To Phoenix

October 23 to 25, 2009
After work on Friday an airport shuttle picked me up at 3:30pm so I could catch a 6:30pm flight to Phoenix. I decided to head out a couple of days early to visit some friends (finally!). That is one of the small perks of this job. I can go to a place a couple of days early and not have to pay for the flight (if the cost is the same or less than it would be if I would fly on Monday). Anyway, the flight was great with little problems. Although when you fly so often you get to watch the same TV programs on the flights over and over. They only change their programs every 2 weeks or so. I got to watch a program on Las Vegas for the second time. Once the plane landed in Phoenix I realized we were pulling up to a gate that didn't have a jet bridge. The plane was pretty big and the stewardess said "I don' t know who we upset but we don't have a jet bridge so you will have to walk down several stairs". The problem was that the stairs were not tall enough for our plane so there was a big gap/step down to get off the plane...not very safe (in my opinion). Once I was inside the baggage area was super crazy. There were 4 carousels and a ton of people, most of us had no idea where we should stand to get our bags. I think every flight landed at the same time! I rank that one of the top 3 worst designed airports for heavy travel :( . I was not expecting it to be so crowded and crazy, but I did get my bag so it all turned out OK in the end.

On Saturday we went to a Mystery Castle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Castle
It was interesting and reminded me a bit of House on the Rock in Wisconsin but on a much smaller scale. The daughter of the builder was there and that was pretty neat. She still lives in the house but has her own personal upstairs area (with air conditioning). She sat on the porch and talked to us for a few minutes. We then went to South Mountain Park up Summit Road. It was a windy, narrow road up a mountain south of Phoenix and it was a good lookout over the city. I was able to get some pretty good photos of the city up there.