Flying lesson

On Saturday Cissi and I finally got to go on our flying lesson. (The first time we tried it was cancelled due to the weather.) But this time the weather was beautiful, though a little windy!

Cissi with our plane.

Flight controls

Cissi went first and got to take off. We did a circuit to the mountains and along the river. Normally he lets people try to land but the wind was pretty strong. Turbulence was impressive and a little scary in a tiny plane! But the views were amazing.

Cissi looking forward to flying

More flight controls.

Concentrating 

View

Sunny mountains

James river

Then we changed seats and I got to fly. I love it!!!!!

Flying!

Pleased with a safe landing!

It was so much fun, and if I am ever rich, I'll take it up as a hobby. But that's not likely to be in the near future.

Cissi with out pilot 

Pleased with ourselves.

After a few Lego related trips on the way back for Cissi, we went to the house of some of her Chinese friends for dinner which was great fun. Everyone was really nice and the food was great. Real Chinese food and very tasty. (Though no chicken feet this time which is a good thing!) :-)

Yuri's night space party

The rest of the week in Hunstville was pretty busy. Drinks and cinema on Thursday night, meeting some of Caroline's friends. A house party on Friday night. (They had the cutest dog who we were seriously contemplating stealing.) We had to leave reasonably early as Saturday morning we did a 5k race and had to be there for 7am. We did pretty well, I thought, and ended quicker than I expected. Not by much but still. I was very proud. We treated ourselves to brunch and found an amazing cake shop (to undo all the good we had just done).
That night there was a party at the rocket centre for Yuri's night, and it was of course space-themed fancy dress. Caroline and I ended up doing our costumes at the last minute so they were a bit odd.

We got a cab to the rocket centre with some of Caroline's friends who were lots of fun. There were loads of people in costumes and we ended up having lots of wine!

Rocket!

Don't blink!

Colorful

Party under a saturn V rocket

Blaine, Tina, Caroline and Bethany with a rocket man

Star Wars

Dancing

Honestly I am not really sure what was going on at this point.

Looking very merry :-)

It was a really great night and we got back and made chips, somehow without burning ourselves.
We were a little worse for wear the next day! After slowly getting sorted, we had to wait for an hour to get a lift back to Caroline's car. After a much needed IHOP breakfast, we headed back to Knoxville. We had intended on going back to Chattanooga but were running a fair bit later than expected, so just headed to the hotel. Where we were lazy and ordered room service and watched Game of Thrones. (We were going to open a bottle of wine I have been carrying around for the last few trips but we keep saving it. But neither of us could face anything to drink!)
This morning, Caroline dropped me off at the bus station and headed home, while I get the Megabus back to Blacksburg.
I had a brilliant week and really like Huntsville. I am looking forward to visiting again sometime. :-)

Rocket centre

Just a few photos from our visit to the Rocket centre in Huntsville. (Caroline is a regular there.)

Tribute to the first monkey in space and returned. Always has a banana on it.

Rocket garden

Shuttle tank is real

Shuttle is a mockup, using to test equipment

Engines were also real

Apollo mockup

Yellow sub used to collect rockets parts from the ocean

Buzz Aldrins space boot footprint

Surprisingly comfortable

View down the saturn rocket

Reminded us of the stargaze

Capsule.

Shooting guns.

Last night Caroline and I went to Larry's Pistols and Pawn (yes, that's its real name) to do a shooting lesson. We needed to get hunting licenses (Walmart sells everything) so now we are truly dangerous.

We were a bit nervous but the instructors were really sweet. They started with a video explaining how to handle guns etc which completely freaked me out. Mostly because there was so much information to take in. But then they gave us guns and dummy rounds to practice how to load and unload. Getting the bullets into the magazine is hard. (Near the end he lent me a tool to make it easy. Why I couldn't have that to start with I don't know.)

My Glock!

We rented guns from the shop (the other couple in the class with us had their own) and were both shooting 9mm Glocks, which are semi-automatics.

After the practice, we went to the shooting range to do it for real. You start in a sitting position shooting one round at a time. And I was so glad I was sitting. For the first time, Bill, our instructor, asked us to do it one at a time and Caroline went first. It was much louder than I expected! I jumped out of my seat! And the kick back was impressive. My gun was a Glock 26 which means it is a bit smaller than the 19 Caroline was using. (They only told me at the end that the smaller one has more of a kickback or I would have switched!)

After sitting we moved to standing. My knees were shacking, I won't deny it. And the position they tell you to shoot from ... well it's not the elegant position you see in the movies.
And after a few single shots, they told us to just full the magazine and shoot as much as we liked. So we set to work trying to obliterate the target. :-)

We had brought 2 boxes of ammo each, though only used one. We were going to take photos with us and the guns but were too nervous and didn't want to seem like tourists!

But we did get keep our targets! :-)

With my target and certificate

Caroline, sharpshooter!

I was very impressed with our shooting. I expected to be awful! The first shot was good, in the black. After that I sorted of wondered for a bit. All the ones in the white are due to me wincing in anticipation of the gun going off! So the instructor basically made me play Russian Roulette (with the target of course) so I didn't know when it was actually going to fire and stopped wincing.

The instructor was really sweet. I was a little tense. (Every time I went to shoot someone else did and I jumped. Plus I was being hit over the head with casings - I found a few down my top later.) So he gave me a little shoulder massage to calm me down. But after a while it got better, I got used to the bangs, and I chilled out a little.

Still I managed to get the bulls eye quite a few times. Caroline even managed to shoot hers out (she got around the rim and the bullseye and a red rim was left on the board)!

We were also rather hyper when we got back. It is quite an adrenaline rush.

"Are you talking to me?"

"I'm not sure!"

It was fun though I am not sure it will become my new hobby! I was expecting my arms to really hurt today, but I am pleasantly surprised.

We spent the rest of the evening trying to calm down with mugs of tea, popcorn and more Game of Thrones. :-)

Chattanooga and Ruby Falls.

On Sunday morning, I did not feel great. I am blaming the fact I only had a salad to eat so the wine really had an effect and not the fact I can't seem to drink much anymore! (Caroline felt fine.) But we were up and out reasonably early to drive the 2 hours to Ruby falls. I have been wanting to visit these falls for a while. The falls are 145 ft inside a cavern in Lookout mountain. The elevator at the start goes down 260 ft into the mountain and the doors are glass so you can see the rock. It was a little unnerving.

Cave Donkey?

Formations.

Cave bacon

The tour was interesting and the tour guide was really good. The only problem I had was the group was really big and they didn't give us enough time at the Falls. I took a few photos of Caroline in front of the falls. I was just handing over my camera and they turned the lights outs! So I didn't get any of me with the falls. :-( But I did get some nice ones just of the Falls.

Ruby falls

Caroline at Ruby falls

 You can also go up the mountain so we headed up and saw the views across Tennessee.

View from Lookout mountai 

Windswept on Lookout mountain

We also wanted to check out Chattanooga. It was a nice little place but not what either of us expected.  There was less of it than we thought there would be. We had a drink and walk over the bridge in search of a downtown-like area.

Paddling area near the aquarium

 We thought there would be more little shops etc. That said, it didn't stop us finding a nice little jewelry shop and spending more money. We are going to head back to Chattanooga next weekend so we have earmarked some places to go. We kind of staggered over a different bridge on the way back, as we were both flagging!

Caroline on our way back to the car.

Then we headed back to Huntsville, Alabama. Via Georgia and Tennessee a few times which confused us. But we made it and after a quick supermarket stop, headed to Caroline's to make thai curry and watch Game of Thrones and Frozen. We were exhausted! But it was a lovely weekend. And I am looking forward to the next week. Lots of fun and wine in Alabama! :-)