Welcome to Goodyear, Arizona

Compliments of the cafeteria, fresh Cinnamon
buns for the newbies.
Yes, they were amazing, and yes, they were absolutely massive.

We've been here at CTC's Goodyear base for a few days now, so just before our lessons begin, I thought I'd let you know a bit more about the airport and what it's like here. 

Long story short, its hot. Really hot. 

The first day we were here, we had a bit of an introduction. We were told about the local area's dangers i.e. rattlesnakes, scorpions and other miscellaneous horrible critters, how to take care of ourselves in the Phoenix climate as well as what we had in store for the next week. We also had our fingerprints taken by some really nice volunteer policemen for the final stage of our TSA application, and we were given all of our necessary equipment to fly, including local area charts, plates for Goodyear, our David Clarke headset, single engine and VFR navigation training manuals, our checklist for the Diamond DA40NG as well as the SD card for the Diamond's Garmin G1000 to save our flight data. 

Fortunately for us, we have Friday off as it's the July 4th holiday weekend, so poor old me has to sit by the pool in the sun for the next three days.... How am I going to cope? What pool do I choose? 

How will we survive with two pools? 

Last night, something happened that I wasn't even sure was possible. Well, not outside of America at least. 

We found a pizza place that supplied us with a 32" pizza. I'll just let that sink in. 32 inch. Pizza. Of course we couldn't eat the whole thing, two slices nearly killed me. 

Adding to that, it could have killed several others. With all the food on offer in the states, they're lucky my short's button didn't fly off like a riffle bullet taking out anyone in its path.



So this weekend, while we still don't have any transportation we're planning to go to Goodyear Baseball park where there are going to be 4th July fireworks, hotdogs and a few (many) beers. Pretty decent. As a brit, we are getting a bit of stick for the 4th of July, but it's all in good fun, and luckily we live along side a load of German Lufthansa students, so we tend to deflect any 'war' talk off at them and they forget about us.

However, most of the other guys living here at Goodyear have gone a bit further afield, some have taken a road trip to LA whereas some have gone to San Diego and naturally, you have to go in a Mustang; well you'd look silly otherwise.


As I've mentioned before, we've not yet sorted out our transportation, so today's been another pool day. I know, damn! 

To be a bit more productive then we had been on friday, Greg (course mate) and I decided to familiarise ourselves with the DA40's checklist; in between sunbathing, finishing off the 32"pizza, having a BBQ and jumping in the pool. Whoop!  

On Sunday, we hired a car from enterprise (who have a discounted deal with CTC) so that we could drive around and see the local sights of Phoenix. I definitely wasn't expecting it to be so picturesque. It's strangely stunning, in a sandy/ desert kinda way. 

I've posted only a few photos from our day out, I've been absolutely ramming Instagram with more of them, so check out my instagram link to see anymore.

White Tank Mountains