Continued . . .

May saw the start of Bristol Convention which was really good fun, it's always soo good to spend time with heaps of friends and TONS of YSA. It was a blast. However on the Saturday I was on my way to Laura's I was involved in  . . . 

A car accident: I was stuck on a roundabout and as I got going a

 car came zooming by cutting me up as he exited the roundabout from the middle lane and clipped my drivers side. It shook me right up and I couldn't really stop shaking for a few days after. Despite thinking that we were going to sort out our own damage he then a month later, decided to go through the insurance company as neither one of us are accepting liability. We're still waiting to hear the outcome. 

The dreaded roundabout. 

My Second overnight: The ash from the Volcanic Eruption caused some problems for a couple of weeks after canceling flights where the ash cloud was located. I didn't have any other problems as far as that was concerned. But one Sunday in May I had gotten called of standby to do Gdansk (GDN) Belfast (BHD). When we landed in BHD, the captain found ash in the Engine . . . Not much but still enough to ground  us until it could be checked by an engineer (who was in Dublin). A Stansted crew were also there and I happened to know the Supervisor from when I was based there which was good fun. We ended up overnighting because of how long it takes to clean a aircraft engine. Stansted got to stay in a 4* hotel in Belfast . . . and we got The Salty Dog in Bangor Bay. lol. We had a really good crew though and had a lot of fun before getting back to Bristol the next day. 

Playing in the Engine

In the flight deck

The Salty Dog

I just love all the gorgeous weather that we've had this summer, it's been so good to be able to wear shorts, flip flops and spend lots of time in the sun. Other than getting burnt it has really made the summer seem more summery, instead of cold, wet and miserable which is what we're used to in England. For Father's Day we went up to see Laura in Bristol and went to Blaise Castle. I've never been here before despite it being just up the road and was great to see another local attraction. It was another beautiful day and perfect for a picnic and walk through the woods to the castle. 

Josh, Dad, and Laura at Blaise Castle

Alton Towers: I love Alton Towers, it is by far my favorite theme park that I have ever been to. It has sooo many fab rides but I think my favorites are definitely Air, Oblivion, Nemises, Rita, then the new ride Th13teen. Although they all come quite close together. The whole theme park is amazing and this week a group of us decided to use our buy one get one free tickets to go to Alton Towers for the day. It was great, we drove up in the morning and used walky talky to communicate between the 2 cars which was really good fun. We didn't get to go on all the rides in the park as the lines were really long. We had to wait for over an hour to get onto Rita, and like 45 mins for Air and Nemises. We did get on all the big rides however and a few little ones before we drove home that night. It was so worth it though and thankfully it was warm but not baking, and we only had a few drops of rain. 

This is Amy in front of Nemises. 

That pretty much brings us  up to July lol. It's been great the last couple of months working a lot more now that we're in the summer season, and we are flying to a few new routes which is always exciting. We have also had a few new people arrive at Bristol base which has been fun, and a few fantastic people leave which is not so fun. I still love being based in Bristol though, it's just so friendly and you get to know everyone. I love it. There have been a couple of long-haul jobs available for Monarch and Air New Zealand and I printed out and filled out the application form, but I just don't know if it's the right thing to be doing right now. I feel really content where I am and whilst my dream is to do long-haul flights, there is  just something that keeps making me put off sending the form off and I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm meant to stay put for now :)

The problem with blinking!

So the problem with blinking I have found is that at one point it is January, and then you blink and it's July. I can't believe it has been that long since I last updated by blog, that's forever, so much has occurred since that to write it all would take the next year. lol. However here is a brief re-cap of all that has been happening. 

My first overnight: In February I had my first overnight in . . . Lanzarote!! First image that comes to mind is hot weather, bright blue skies, and beaches right?? We had grey sky and torrential rain. 

So the story . . . We were doing a Lanzarote flight (ACE) and the weather was sooo bad and we got hemmed in by thunderstorms (we could see the lightning outside the aircraft) so we couldn't land in ACE so we diverted to Gran Canaria (LPA) and re-fueled and waited a little while for the storm to pass. Well they decided that it wasn't moving but to give it a try anyway so off we went again warning the passengers that if we couldn't get in we were going to divert again and have to disembark. So off we went and you can guess we diverted to Feurteventura because ACE was still closed. We then got told that we were to disembark the passengers and leave them there (on the wrong island) and go back to Bristol empty. However, it took ages to disembark because the passengers were refusing to. We then went off again empty and were told to try ACE one last time since we were

going past it. As you could guess we got in this time but didn't have enough hours to go back toBristol because we would of been flying too long. So we had to overnight. However, it wasn't all as glamorous as you may think since we didn't get to our hotel til 00:30, we went to get something to eat then had be at leaving for the airport at 11:00. However it was a pretty cool experience and oddly enough we felt like real cabin crew lol. And we got to stay in a 5*hotel. :) 

Dublin: For my birthday, me, Laura, Mum, and Lucas went to Dublin for the day which was really good. After a meeting for work, we went to the Titanic expedition, and then (window) shopping on Grafton Street. It was really good spending the day looking round another city and fun that we could spend just a day in another country. I love the fact that this is possible in Europe because we're all so close geography wise. 

America: So work assigned me a week of Annual Leave for the first week in April which I was not allowed to change. As I didn't want to twiddle my thumbs at home for a week and there aren't many places I wanted to go to just for a week, on my own because all my mates were still in Uni, I decided to book a second week off and I booked my ticket to AMERICA. I literally booked the plane ticket 10 days before I went. I was sooo excited to be going back to America to spent time with all my Uni friends. I've been missing living in America since I left. I spent 10 days in Utah first, spending lots of time with Megan, Craig, Rob, Nadine, and seeing a lot of people from my BYU ward, my friend Katie from Teriyaki Stix and I met her baby Naomi. It was sooo good to have some closure on BYU and just bask in the Utahn-ness off it all, went to conference, temple square, shopping, and ate at lots of places I've been missing. 

After 10 days in Utah I spent 5 days in California with one of my old roommates Anna. It was so good and the weather was perfect temperature. We went to the beach, and Disneyland, and shopping in a huge mall. I also got to see Downtown LA which was awesome with the walk of fame and the Hollywood sign (which you could barely see because of all the fog) It was so fun to see another culture within the USA. 

Volcanic Eruption: On the way home from the States I flew LAX to Minneapolis, and then from there to Amsterdam and then I was meant to fly to Bristol from there. Everything was great and after hearing all about the fantastic weather England was happening I was shocked to fly over a black cloud when we went over England. After landing in Amsterdam I got told the flight to Bristol was cancelled. With no other information, and they weren't rebooking any

 flights. After finally finding out that they had closed

 UK air space I decided to try and drive home 

since I was meant to be at work and we wouldn't know when air space would open again, and I would need to be back in time for work. So I managed to rent a car and drove from

 Amsterdam to Rotterdam to Gent to Lille to Arras which is as far as I was allowed to take the car. Because I had gotten stuck in traffic and lost in Rotterdam I had missed the last train to Calais which is where I wanted to catch a ferry. So instead I stayed the night in Arras. At that point all the the ferries and trains were fully booked the next day but luckily Mum and Dad were in France as well and Dad and siblings came home early and picked me up on the way home, and Mum  had to come home on the Monday via hire car and ferry. In the end though air space was closed for 6 days . . . could of had a nice holiday in Amsterdam lol. 

To be continued . . .