Bonus

Nice and empty for me 🙂 The Red Arrows and another display team did a combined practice display. They didn't fly together during the actual airshow so we were lucky 🙂

🙂

After posting pics of me working at Fairford Airshow whilst it was being installed, I'm finally getting around to posting pics I took of the planes as they arrived. It was so nice being able to drive anywhere we wanted to and take pics before the crowds arrived 🙂 These 2 pics are of an F-22 that comes in "kit form" in half a dozen shipping containers and is put together by a team. It's actually just a big and very realistic plastic model!

I'm not sure exactly. If I find out I'll post it on here.

He wasn't cycling but....... We have a 21 yr old nephew who is studying/work experiencing in Cape Town at the moment. He's a well bought up, polite and considerate young man who would never hurt anyone. He was attacked walking to work early the other morning. They sliced through his chest, lung, diaphragm and spleen - cutting him from his upper chest down to his lower stomach. Stole his almost empty wallet and left him for dead. He managed to crawl for help. Someone found him and he was rushed to hospital. They removed his spleen but managed to save his lung and repair his diaphragm. yesterday he came off of his morphine drip and hopefully in a few days he'll be able to leave hospital and go home for a long period of rest and recovery.

Yep 🙂

There was a week or so that was incredible hot - 38 & 39 degrees. The heat coming up from the runways and taxiways was exhausting. Twice we worked all day, saw the sun set and then saw it rise again the next day! 21hr shifts - because there was a lot of stuff we had to do between the last plane coming in on the evening before the airshow and the next morning when the doors opened. Then again the moment the doors closed on Sunday evening we worked all night so that planes could leave early the next day. Tough work but very rewarding and with a great bunch of people.

Packing up 😞

Taking down the big vinylls - gravity helped!

I wanted to bring some of the pics home - but where would I put them?

VIP entrance and Exit . . . .

Lots of branding . . . .

We had nothing to do with this! It went up in a day, they work fast!

My son, enjoying time out of the office!

We had to hang some big vinyl banners on the aircraft hangers facing the crowd areas. They were over in the USAF section of the base, so we needed a lots of paper work sorting out first.

Welfare cabin arrived. Has it's own electricity and water - so a home from home! Equipment started arriving by truck soon after. 7, 9 and 12m flagpoles and their concrete bases....

As I mentioned on our "Bonus & Wendys Big Adventure" thread, I've been working for my son in the UK on and off throughout this year. My son works for a big events company and the highlight of my year so far by far has been my four weeks at RAF Fairford - the joint RAF/USAF airbase near Swindon which hosts the annual RIAT - Royal International Air Tattoo - for a weekend every July. Install takes three weeks, then de-rig takes a week - all for two days in the middle! But what an amazing two days. I'll post some work photo's first, then some planes 🙂

It's been a while since we posted anything much on here - so this is just a quick note to say we're still alive and kicking! My son came over with his partner to visit us last year at the end of October and between us all we started making plans to change the way we were doing things a bit. In a nutshell, my son, a Project Manager with a big "Events" company, was in a position to give me a load of work, which would allow us to make more progress than we could make carrying on the way we were. So, since the end of January I've been commuting between home and the UK, working in the UK when there's work to do, whilst "Wendy" holds the fort in Spain. It's a quick 1hr 50min flight that doesn't cost too much (as long as you don't mind the unsociable flight times!) and although we do miss each other a lot we do have unlimited internet for video calls and we both feel better knowing we're now getting somewhere. And . . . . I am enjoying working for my son enormously! I'm going to post some pics in the Aviation thread regarding my latest work . . . 🙂

"Big Jan - a massive diesel engine of power" the commentators used to say. Used to love watching him ride.

Did some work at Wembley Stadium back in May. The place is massive!

I'm in the UK at the moment and a couple of weeks ago I spent a Saturday working on the Ride London Womens race in Epping, Essex, north east of London. The company my son works for was responsible for all the barriers and advertising, direction & distance signs, the start/finish line and the Sprint & Queen of the Mountains (in Essex??) lines. We installed in the morning, watched the race and then de-rigged late afternoon. It was great fun with reasonable weather. We had a combination of lots of friendly, interested locals and a few assholes. The biggest issue really was the intolerance of the majority of car drivers, but I won’t go into that. “Haters gonna hate” and all that. Sadly we had to clear the road of drawing pins at one point, but regardless of that the race itself went well. Start & Finish,,, Road Crew I set up the QOM point Not everyone likes cycling 😞

Really good to see Main Cheese finish in the top ten. Well done!

I'm watching highlights of the Criterium du Dauphine every evening and last night when the commentators were doing their pre race intro they said that Chris was ill and on his way home. He'd had a bad day previously. Apparently he needed to do well in this race to secure a place at le Tour next month . . . .