"Graecia Capta Ferum Victorem Cepit"

I know no Greek language, so I had to resort to Latin. That phrase means something in the line of: "Captive Greece Captivated its Savage Conqueror". That's the phrase the romans used to illustrate how the Greek culture had influenced them so much.

Like them, I've spent countless hours reading about the Greeks, their myths, their history, their glory and their downfall. It's one of my oldest wishes to travel there and see with my eyes the places I've seen in my dreams and my books since I was a kid. Oh yes, and try some ouzo while at it!

For this trip, I got a plane that will make PD drool. A mighty B-52! Of course, it was modified to allow passengers in its cargo bay. Believe me, you will feel very comfortable. By the way, I wouldn't touch those nukes, if I were you.

I had some trouble convincing PD that we will not travel to Moscow but finally he yielded and we all could climb on the plane for another ride.


Impressive, I know :-D
In no time we are once again flying over the Mediterranean. This is a beast of a plane! Thankfully, now i get to hear a lot more chat in Spanish. Elgo, Freaky, Argento, Ecap and Eric who only says things like "Tu eres más bonita que un tortilla, olé!" followed by "Did that make any sense?" which of course it doesn't.

So many people means lot more discussions. They don't last much, though, and the girls, AJ and mikathegreat laughing at whatever nonsense either Dribbler or Murray are saying makes me want to put the plane on Autopilot and join the fun! Yoda, Puma, Drib, MG, Argento and I have discovered that we share many things in common when it comes to music tastes so we spend some time listening to some unknown and classic bands.

Below us, the Fiumicino Airport in Rome.
Definitely not a "green" airplane...
Sun is setting as we reach the Adriatic Sea.
Say hello to the Island of Corfu (Kerkira) so much history below us!

Athens, at last!
Well, time to land and look for Angie. Then it's ouzo time! ;-)

"Toreador, oh don't spit on the floor"

...at least, according to Bart Simpson. Which means, of course, that we are heading for Spain!!! Yay!

We spent quite a bit of time at Finland, partly, due to some technical problems. I think it was a clear case of sabotage! You don't want me to be the Nr.1 pilot! There was white powder in the fuel! Dribbler went to a photocopy store and came back with lots of copies of his butt!

Ahem...we also stayed to enjoy the celebrations in Finland for Kimi's WDC. Basically, they drank vodka from gallon-sized bottles, and sometimes they smiled.

Sorry, back on subject.

This time we got ourselves a luxurious little Learjet 45. And a couple hundred bottles of Absolut. For the road. And Meanioni, who joined us here! I thought because he liked us. But seeing him dive into the storage area looking for the bottles made me thing otherwise.

The now traditional instrument panel shot.


... and the cockpit, from the outside. Hey! Who are those???

An uneventful trip over parts of Sweden, Denmark, Germany and France (sorry, the route didn't came close to any major landmark) and we are already flying across the Pyrenees, the mountain range between France and Spain.


Arrival at Reus Airport, just outside of Tarragona. Now, the program didn't make a good job of depicting the city. Nor Vitoria, our next destination. So I traded them for a visit to Barcelona!

But first we pick up Freaky here. She is still a little drunk (with "virtual" vodka) yet still as lovely. She takes us on a tour around Tarragona. A beautiful, ancient city with history that goes back to the Romans. Many buildings around town still remind us of its legacy, like the Anfiteatro, and the Part Alta. We missed the fireworks festival, though, which is a real shame for they say is the best in the whole mediterranean.

Hurry! We still need to pick up Elgo and go to Barcelona!
An aerial view of Tarragona. It doesn't makes justice to the city, I know.


Heading to the Basque County now. You can see the city of Vitoria in the background.
Elgo was already waiting for us and guess what? She looks nothing like a dancing banana! Quite a shock!


Vitoria is another beautiful city. The Basque County and the Catalan county being two of the most peculiar counties in all Spain. Each one with their own proud heritage. At Vitoria we got a chance to see the cathedral and the Torre de Doña Otxandra.

Have I mentioned how good is food in Spain? I am not sure I want to continue traveling. I think I will stuff my face here. You can have the plane. Here, take the keys.

Oh, well...we need to catch up. We are going to Barcelona now. I arranged a helicopter tour around Barcelona. Of course, there's no room for all of us. So, I democratically decided that only the ladies (Katy, Kay, Freaky and Elgo) and me would take it. Thank you guys, kind of you to come to the helipad to see us go. The torches and pitchforks are a nice touch!



Heading for the mythical Camp Nou Stadium. The Colserolla tower above the hill.


The Santa María del Pi Church. (Sorry, the game crashes when I try to reach the Sagrada Familia or the Torre Agbar)

The Olympic complex at Montjuic. Speaking of which, I can hardly wait to see F1 racing again there! (No, not at the Olympic Stadium. You know what I mean!)


That was quick! Next stop: Greece.

YeahfersurewearegoingtoFinlandfersure

We came to Ireland to pick one guy and ended up picking up three people: mika, Ecap and Erinn.

I should've get a transatlantic, not a plane. Oh, well!

We are all set for Finland now. Looks like another beautiful day with some scattered clouds. Great for testing our Boing 737, a classic and dependable airplane. Ecap keeps asking me questions about some fire damage on his plane. No idea what he is talking about. He uses many mexican words I don't understand like "Pinche cabrón" y "Chinga tu madre". Anyways, I blame Argento for all this...ahem!

Say goodbye to the British Islands...
Wanna know how many buttons and knobs I have to use to fly this thing?

After less than an hour we are already flying over the Norwegian fjords. A beautiful landscape below us!


We cross Sweden and part of the Baltic sea to reach the Finn coast. Vaasa Airport is just south from the city and a light rain is falling. Time to change tyres to wets :-p

Suomenpankki was at the airport. Luckily, next day we all could enjoy a sunny day and the beautiful Vaasa, the sunniest city in Finland. Even if the FSX doesn't shows it, Vaasa has a lovely architecture. We managed to get some shots from the sea.


And now...let's get drunk with Suomenpankki's vodka supply! Of course, the young ones won't be allowed (yes, that includes you, Kay) so go play with Mika's Playstation! Us grown ups will take care of the "acting like total asses" part. Don't worry!

Hope you enjoyed your flight. Soon we will head for Spain!

To The Settlement of the Ford of the Reed Hurdles

We spent some days visiting Kay. We even convinced her that going to law school would be no better than joining a band of crazy pervs for a virtual tour around the world. She believed us. Maybe it was that funny powder that Pabloh put in her drink. Who knows. The important thing is, she joined us.

So, we needed to go back to London. Another uneventful ride until right before landing. At that moment, I took a little detour and we landed at Rochester Field, a small airport. From there, it was a 15km drive until we reached Sittingbourne.



And who was there? Shane! Yeah, I couldn't resist. After all, we all want to enjoy the match once Cav join us at Sydney, don't we? No? Sorry.
He seemed a little overwhelmed when he saw the whole gang. But it took just a couple of minutes of goofy talk courtesy of Murray, Pabloh and Eric to make him feel welcome.

Ok, fast forward a few days. We all went crazy around London. Museums, Pubs, bookstores, palaces, bridges, monuments...you know the drill.

Now we are on board of our latest acquisition: a Bombardier CRJ-700 at Gatwick Airport, a small (compared to the A380 monster) plane ideal for our trip to Ireland.

London airports have lots of traffic. We were told to queue behind a 747, which we did. Wouldn't dare to mess with those giants.


Some hills below as we fly across Wales...

Touchdown at Dublin Airport
Can you tell this is Ireland?
Here we meet with Mikathegreat2 (from now on, just "Mika") the youngest member. So you better behave back there!!! Geez...

Kay and Mika seem to go along well. We get to see some famous landmarks of Dublin.

The Four Courts:
Irishtown Stadium and the monstrous chimneys of the Poolbeg Power Station:


Part of Dublin Castle (The Chapel Royal), The Trinity College and those buildings at the back are the George's Quay Plaza. The old building across the river is the Customs Building.

Croke Park Stadium, the biggest stadium in Ireland:

Well, enough for today! See you soon!

Here, there and everywhere...

Welcome back. We spent some time relaxing at Monza's. I learned how not to eat porridge, black pudding and all that. How I miss those barbeques now *sigh*.

Anyways, soon enough Dribbler joined us from...err...wherever he came from. It seems like Kettering is a nice, peaceful place and our laughter and talking and singing was too much for the small town so soon enough we were politely asked to leave, never to come back (well, maybe MG will be able to come back)


Another early departure, this time under heavy rain. Next stop: Liverpool, to meeth that darn scouser: Pabloh!

Silent sleepy farms and fields below...

Only a few minutes and we are already flyong over Liverpool. According to my gps, somewhere down there you should be able to spot Penny Lane. Mmmh...guess Microsoft didn't go into much detail whne designing Liverpool. Well, who cares?
The only recognizable feature I could find, after flying around in circles was the Radio City Tower.
PD is growing impatient and, bearing in mind that he is carrying a pickaxe, I decide not to delay the landing anymore. Soon enough, we have landed and met Pabloh. Now this is growing into quite a lively crowd!
Damn! Is good to see das cheeky scouser in person! Thanks to him, I learned that I didn't have to actually make any sense to be part of the forums. The whole multi-national, multi-lingual crowd goes around for a tour around Liverpool. Me and Eric had the greatest idea: yell to the top of our lungs "We hate the Beatles!!!". Nobody seemed to care, except for Puma, Drib, PD, Argento and Yoda that almost strangled us before we had time to say that it was a joke.

As we are on a tight schedule, I will not tell everything we did at Liverpool. Let's just say that when we finally boarded the plane again, Pabloh and PD both carried some big chunks of bricks, straight from "The Cavern"!

Come on, hurry up! There's still so many friends to pick up!

Wondering where are we heading now? Plymouth, to go whale hunting! Oh, yes, and maybe meeting Kay there.

We need some more fuel for the final leg of our English tour. Meanwhile, I just was told that whaling boats are no more. I traveled this far in vain! What has the world come to when a nice guy can't go do some good whalingh with his friends? Anyways, we meet Kay. She is standing there, and I finally get to see her famous "serious" look. Of course, only shallow people looks at the corners of a mouth to tell if someone is smiling. If you look carefuly into Kay's eyes, you will find that she is smiling. And smiling big.

Anyways, in the blink of an eye, she is surrounded by the guys. Specially Murray, who keeps asking about the schoolgirl uniform. I should have tied him down and left him in the plane.

Time to call a night. So we will spend some time enjoying Plymouth's beauties and the company of Kay, Murray, Drib, Monza and Pabloh.

See you soon!

Murray, Monza Gorilla...

Finally, while the rest went to spend some days in London, I got myself a nice little Mooney Bravo to go pick up some of our English friends. So soon I am on the road again, departing from Heathrow.
Of course, such a small planes is great for some sightseeing so here are some of the most typical views of London.




Time to get to work! It's a short ride to Cambridge and the day is not so bad, temp.10ºC and just a little hint of fog so soon we are arriving at Cambridge. Just before landing, we passed right to this building. I have no idea what it is (it is not part of the Cambridge University, I think), well...Murray will have to tell us!

By the way, for your information, this plane comes with the latest technology: the Garmin glass cockpit. Nice, functional and filled with info. Great for IFR (instrument flying).

Cambridge airport and Murray is already there!

As soon as he sees us, he starts to laugh. And we haven't even spoke! It's great to finally meet him. We spend the morning going around Cambridge, and I discover it is even more enjoyable to talk with him in person than it is over the net. We have just too much to talk about.

Nice little town, Cambridge. He takes us to Parker's Piece, which is a flat, empty space with two strips of asphalt and just a lampost in the middle called "Reality Checkpoint". Errr...I look at Pumpdoc, Eric and Puma to see if they get the joke, but they stare at me blankly. British humour is not for everybody!
Oh, well. Time to go back to the plane! Next stop: Kettering, to pick up our good old Monza Gorilla.

Sadly, I still have no photoreal scenery of U.K. so it's hard to navigate with the help of landmarks (which is called VFR, visual flight). Anyways, soon I find the southern fields around kettering and turn back north to land at Denethorpe, an old RAF airbase. Just then it starts raining.



It's a short trip to Kettering, proud birthplace of John Profumo! Bet most of you young ones don't know who John Profumo was (unless you like to read about history or spy novels). You should ask MG ;) I would take everything he says with a pinch of salt, though, because he is so darn British it's very hard to tell when he is joking and when is he being serious.

Well, right now he is joking and giving us a tour around Kettering and its surroundings.

They have a sign near Kettering that says "Irthingborough Road" instead of "Irthlingborough Road". Har har har! Yeah, I know, it gets old after a while.
Anyways, we spend the night here and MG shows us all his F1 stuff. We stayed up all night chatting with MG and Murray. Eric and Murray get along real well and they look like a comic duo. It's hard to keep up with them.

From here we will go to Liverpool to get Pablo...so stay tuned!