Photo of Shay--after he got comfortable with the idea of flying:
Went to Prescott, Arizona today--a trip that normally would take 5 hours one way. We made it in 6 minutes. Steve's boss bought a learjet on Ebay recently (yep, look em up, you can buy pretty much anything on there) and in order for Steve to have a co-pilot, he has to train some people up in the air with him. These are not newbies to the profession or anything, just people who already fly quite a lot but need some time in this particular jet to get their license updated.
So, Shay and I met them at the airport and climbed aboard at about noon. We got to Prescott very quickly, had lunch, then turned around and came back home.
This jet is soooo fast, at one point Steve turned around and said to us, "We're flying at about 460 miles per hour." Dang. It burned 350 gallons of fuel, so if you calculate how much jet fuel is--around $3 per gallon (at cost because Steve's boss also recently bought the Chevron station at the airport) then that means today's quick training session cost about $1,000. Not including the $20 lunch, though. That's extra.
Six minutes to go the same distance that takes 5 hours to drive. A lot of it has to do with the desert and mountains--if you're driving you have to take a very indirect route, around the impassible parts of the state.
I wish my base income was even close to Steve's boss's expendable income. The guy has been doing construction and real estate development since he was 20 years old (not without an awful bankruptcy of course) and lately he's been very lucky in business. He comes from the Harrah family (hotels and casinos) so he didn't exactly start out as a pauper.
So, Shay and I met them at the airport and climbed aboard at about noon. We got to Prescott very quickly, had lunch, then turned around and came back home.
This jet is soooo fast, at one point Steve turned around and said to us, "We're flying at about 460 miles per hour." Dang. It burned 350 gallons of fuel, so if you calculate how much jet fuel is--around $3 per gallon (at cost because Steve's boss also recently bought the Chevron station at the airport) then that means today's quick training session cost about $1,000. Not including the $20 lunch, though. That's extra.
Six minutes to go the same distance that takes 5 hours to drive. A lot of it has to do with the desert and mountains--if you're driving you have to take a very indirect route, around the impassible parts of the state.
I wish my base income was even close to Steve's boss's expendable income. The guy has been doing construction and real estate development since he was 20 years old (not without an awful bankruptcy of course) and lately he's been very lucky in business. He comes from the Harrah family (hotels and casinos) so he didn't exactly start out as a pauper.
