In From Oz

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while since I last posted. A lot of it is mostly me being too lazy to go to the effort of pounding the keyboard to tell of what's going on around here. To keep a blog going you have to be on top of it and that hasn't been happening...looks like it's on top of me!

The main story of the last two weeks has been the visit of my mum-in-law and sister-in-law from Australia! They arrived on 11 April after a fine adventure of plane schedule rearranging due to the grounding of the entire American Airlines fleet of MD-80 aircraft due to the FAA not being happy that there wasn't a plastic tie along every inch (seriously, every "inch") of a wire bundle tucked up in the front wheel well of the planes. Oh, and the ties had to be pointing in the same direction! Despite whatever you heard on the news, this was not a safety issue. Any problems the MD-80's had in the past five years had nothing to do with that wire bundle but the FAA wanted to show Congress that they were on top of things in air safety and, as a result, over 1500 flights over 4 days were cancelled which left about 200,000 people stranded in airports all over the country...including my in-laws. American Airlines got the blame from the general public and news media (some of the worst reporting you could imagine...well, maybe not the worst) even though it was not largely their fault.

I contacted Raelene, Jonnene's sister, when they were in Monterey, CA and told them that their flight was one of the hundreds canceled. The plus side was that I was able to give them about 28 hours notice so they could make arrangements for a new flight to Dallas. It worked out for them to take Alaskan Airlines up to Seattle and then down to Dallas...sounds out of the way but it was the best arrangement they could get. Outside of watching an engine starter being replaced on the tarmac in Seattle they got to Dallas early enough to catch the last flight into Shreveport that night. Funny thing, my Dad and step-mom were on the same flight since they were returning from a week in Arizona. I called and managed to hook them up before they got on board so they could meet.

So, everyone's been here for almost two weeks now and the in-law's leave on the 29th with a cruise in Alaska as part of the remainder of their trip. We've shown them around the area, made a trip to Lafayette last weekend for some Cajun culture, and they've met many of our friends and my family.

The first weekend everyone was here, I had to work a local bike race so I wasn't around much. On that Sunday, Jonnene drove everyone down to the criterium race (photo above) to show them a bit of the action. They also saw plenty of the races the day before so I'm sure they had their fill of bicycle racing!