P Diddy Wishes He Lived With Meeeee!

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.

Daddy's Girl

Went to my boyfriend's class reunion this past weekend. Everyone asks, "Where was it?" Easiest way to explain is to just say, "BFE."
Steve grew up in southern Arizona, very close to the Mexican border. His family had a ranch and he fondly tells me stories of working with his dad in the fields all those years. Sometimes I envision his teen years as the movie Footloose, because that's what it sounds like. Steve would be the character portrayed by Kevin Bacon, rebelling against the conservative majority in the tiny reclusive town. Boning every chick in sight. Dancing with the cowboy hat. Playing chicken on the highway after church.
It took us over seven hours to drive to the town where our hotel room was. Sierra Vista. Oh GAWD what an awful place to be stuck in. Checked in, then hopped in the truck to see the sights. Tombstone is about 15 minutes away from there, so we went. Very cool. Everything is still there, preserved from the late 1800's. Wyatt Earp's house, the saloon that he and his brothers owned, the jail, courthouse, etc. I looked for ghosts, but didn't see any. Jerks.
Just like any tourist attraction, there were overpriced gift shops and a $10 charge to see most of the really interesting things. We went near the O.K. Corral but didn't go in because I couldn't justify the charge for looking at an empty dirt lot. We saw the Boot Hill Cemetary, and the Tombstone Cemetary, and took plenty of pictures.
Had dinner with Steve's dad and stepmom that night, which was AWESOME. She's a very good cook.
The next day, we hopped in Steve's dad's car and drove around to the other little towns in the area. These are all old mining towns that have houses that are over 100 years old, and impressive hotels with really cool histories. One hotel, which we visited the inside of, has a marble grand staircase in the lobby. There's a poster nearby with the testimony of a man whose grandfather worked at the hotel in the early 1900's. Pancho Villa was still quite a problem then, and the guy wrote that Pancho rode his horse into the lobby of the hotel, shooting his guns into the air. He rode the horse up the steps of the marble staircase, chipping the marble on the seventh stair. You can see the chip still. It's about 3 inches wide. How bizarre!!

We drove into Mexico, to do some pharmacy shopping. For those of you who have never been, Mexico has awesome deals on stuff and you only have to show a prescription if you're trying to get a narcotic. We just wanted some Retin-A and Prilosec. Cha CHING! Great deals.
Had lunch, then headed back to Sierra Vista.

We got ready for the Reunion, and as we were, Steve was telling me about his plans for the last reunion that he missed because he got into his helicopter accident. He'd planned on flying down in a helicopter and landing right outside the reunion. Yep, just like Romy and Michelle. As he was telling me this, a song from the Romy and Michelle movie came on. Just about peed my pants. Of course, he was hospitalized so he missed that reunion.

This reunion was an "All School" one because the size of the damn school is so small. So, there were people from all years, like from the fifites all the way through to the 90's. We sat in the back, with a teacher of Steve's who recently retired. Once everyone was seated, the organizer of the event got on the microphone and started talking about the people she wanted to thank. She thanked Steve for being the first person to buy tickets back in December. Then she said, "Oh, and aren't you a helicopter pilot who does movies, like Austin Powers?" Everyone just gasped and turned around to look at us. Steve was recently profiled on the Phoenix news for the stunt piloting he's done, in movies. She apparently saw it. How funny.

Dinner sucked, so I stuck with the Tequila Sunrises I got from the bar. After dinner, people started coming over to ask Steve about his flying and stuff. Nobody from his school has seen him since he left back in the 70's, because he immediately went all over the world doing flying jobs. He was seeing the world and I was a toddler. Learning how to talk.
Some people came in late, and it was friends of Steve's so we hung with them. Had lots of drinks and acted silly. One of them was a gorgeous blonde named Joelle. Turns out, she was a very serious girlfriend of his back in the 80's. Dang!!! She was hilarious to talk to, a very outgoing personality. Great boobs, too. We talked about our philosophy on blow jobs, eye contact, and the funky looking people all around us. Surprisingly, there wasn't the amount of reminiscing that I thought there would be. They mostly talked chit chat. Never talked about family or what is going on in their lives now. Actually, I liked it. Very little substance, and it was easy to pay attention to.
The next day we struggled out of bed and had breakfast with Steve's dad. AWESOME. His stepmom made tamales and eggs. Oh, I was in heaven. Especially since I didn't eat the night before. The drive home was fascinating because we took some unknown back roads and explored. Arizona has a neat history of being a big cattle state, and we looked around at some old abandoned cattle feed lots. Found a shrimp farm in the middle of nowhere.
Now we need to drag our kids out there, to show them.
Since it was Father's Day, I had Steve's present at home waiting for him. It was a steel cane with a titanium hammer-head for a handle. Not very lightweight, because of the steel. I guess it'll be a cane for special events. I had it made for him, with the help of some friends.

And now today I've gotta work. Crap.