I awoke at 6.30am, 30 minutes after my supposed check in time. Remember the opening scene of "Four Weddings and a Funeral"? I am Hugh Grant! Sorry to the Solna boys that heard me thundering up and down the stairs at 6.30am screaming "I do not f*cking belive I've done it again".

I got to LHR about 10mins before they closed the gate. The guy that was issuing tickets initially refused to let me on. When I pointed out that I was only carrying hand luggage he relented and I was escorted from the check-in desk to my flight by a man that was as wide as he was tall and covered in muscles. I made my flight.

In my rush to get out of the house I forgot:

Swimming shorts ( 2 holidays in succession ) Camera. Switch Card - fortunately I had my Visa. Tea-bags + beans for Jason. Sunglasses. Deodorant, toothpaste, shaving stuff. George.

Jason picked me up as promised, ferried me back to his house and prepared me a fine "jet-lag beater" Margherita. Many drinks later Jason, Nicole [ his wife ] and I went out to a Jagermeister night. If you've never tasted Jagermeister then don't. It tastes like cough medicine. We only went since Nicole is friends with a couple of the Jagermeister girls. Anyway we drank beers and Jagermeister, played pool and fussball, then I kind of collapsed at about 10.30pm having been awake for 24hrs exactly....I must be getting old.

On Saturday we went shopping and I got all the things that I'd forgotten and bought a few treats for myself after which we did something that escapes me.

Sunday was a barbecue/pool party with loads of beers. The night alternated between mixing Margeritas, lying in the outdoor hot-tub after the sun went down and playing floodlit pool-volleyball. Jason and I played Brits v Yanks. We lost most of the games because:

a) we're crap. b) we were drunk. c) well I think a and b just about cover it.

On Monday I did 3 jumps down at Skydive Arizona in Eloy, each one of which was a real trouser ripper. I tried a bit of messing around so that instead of going down belly first in the traditional skydive stylee you go down feet first in a kind of crucifix shape. Could I do it.....of course not. I'd get vaguely into the correct position then end up plummeting to earth at 120+ mph arse first.

I'll manage it before I leave though. Yeah, yeah fat balding Norfolk boy, I know *you* can do it. Monday night was quite a quiet one. I burnt vegetable Lasagna but Jason and Nicole were too polite to comment upon it.

On Tuesday it was back to Eloy to do some more jumps. As I arrived another guy arrived who also jumped two-handled parachutes. Two handles are what you should use, one handles are generally used to train students.

Well, the DZ ( DropZone you peasants ) only have two two-handled rigs to loan out. One containing a 280 sq/ft canopy and one containing a 220 sq/ft canopy. In the past I'd always jumped a 280 but I wanted to move to a smaller rig. Since I was considerably lighter than the other chap I took the 220 and he had the 280. Since the canopy is 60sq/ft smaller it's much more fun, and much much faster upon landing.

All went well until I was about 15ft from the ground and began to realise just how fast I was going. It was brown trouser fast, kind of a "Jesus Christ I'm going to die fast". I flared like there was no tomorrow but it didn't stop me hitting the deck BIG time.

Due to my incompetence I have a bruise the size of Brighton on my left foot, scratches up my elbows and on my shoulder and an enormous dent in my ego. I picked myself up off the floor, untangled myself from my parachute and hobbled back to the packing centre. Undaunted I booked myself on the next lift. The second impact with the ground was considerably lighter than the first but I still ended up sprawled out on the floor of the Arizona desert. The winds picked up and I had to go home.

Wednesday, today, I arrived at the DZ at about 7.30am to get myself on the first lift of the day at 8am. All in all quite a normal jump, and a usual pick myself up off the floor landing. The third jump of the day was a "hop and pop". Usually you jump out at 13,000ft for a 55sec freefall. But to get a class A license you have to be able to cope with an aircraft emergency. To simulate this the plane climbs to 4,000ft. The door comes open and you bail out, pulling your rip-chord as soon as you're stable. It took me about four seconds but you wouldn't believe how much "bigger" the ground looks from such a piffling height :) My fourth, and subsequently final jump of the day was cool. Above the doorway of the plane is a bar to hold on to. What you can do, and what looks remarkably cool to the people in the plane, is to swing on the bar so that you launch out feet first, perform a perfect back somersault and then drop straight into the stable belly down position. What made this jump particularly cool is that I managed to stay on my feet when I landed. Fair enough I hit the deck going fast and had to sprint to stay up, but nevertheless I did, and I'm sat at this keyboard a happy bunny indeed.

That's it so far, things happening in the near future:

Tonight I'm watching Star Wars. :)

Tomorrow I'll go jumping out of planes before flying to California to go wine tasting in the Nappa Valley. We'll then be spending the weekend on Tommy's yacht on the Northern Californian coast.

Next week, after returning from California Jason and I will head to Mexico for a couple of days of scuba diving and a couple of nights of tasting the finest Tequila in the world. We then return to Phoenix where we'll spend a day jet-skiing/water skiing on Lake Pleasant. After that we have no real plans for a few days.

Well the last mail finished with me about to go see Star Wars, which I did and which I very much enjoyed. I didn't find Jar-Jar Binks as annoying as most people have seemed to, according to the reviews. The special effects were spot-on and the light sabre fights just kill me. Oh well, only another month and a half for you guys to wait over in sunny England. :)

I awoke on the Thursday covered in bruises around my armpits and my upper thighs. These were caused when the parachute gets deployed and yoiks you from 100mph down to about 15mph in a couple of seconds. Bearing this in mind I decided to take a day off from jumping and went for a walk around the Mall instead. Bought a new t-shirt and came back to the house to pack for the flight to California.

When we arrived at the airport it seems that our flight was oversubscribed and they were offering $500 flight vouchers for the people willing to take another flight. The three of us volunteered. It was about 4 mins before the flight was due to leave when the check-in desk proudly told us that they'd managed to squeeze us onto the plane. Great! We'd just about decided on either flying to Hawaii or ski-ing in Portland. Flippin' America-West.

We arrived in California and it was cold with a capital "I'm sure I used to have gonads". It was warm compared to an English evening but after you've just spent a week acclimatising to Phoenix temperatures it seemed bladdy cold!

It was approaching 9.30 as we pulled into Benicia and we were all hungry. Pat, our driver for the night told us that pretty much everything in the suburbs closes at 9.30 so Jason and I bailed into a chinese takeaway whilst Nicole and Pat went to pick up the second car from Lin. Jason and I ordered a load of food and looked longingly out of the window waiting for our lifts to arrive. We looked and looked, then we ordered a couple of beers. We tucked into the spare ribs and still we looked. After we finished the ribs and downed the beers it seemed like leaving was the only decent thing to do. So we left the warmth of the chinese. Almost immediately the lights went out, the door locked and the staff left the building like rats from a sinking ship.

Jason and I became cold. We shivered. We swore and we shivered some more. After ten minutes of what seemed like -40 degrees centigrade two sets of headlights appeared on the horizon like a mirage. Jason and I decided that even if it wasn't the girls we were definitely getting in these cars. It was the girls and twenty minutes later we were in a nice warm appartment eating chinese food and drinking Pat's mexican beer. Result.

On Friday the motto for the day was "We can do less". Bearnig this in mind it was all rather hectic. We drove down into Benicia centre and ate at a Mexican restaurant where we started chugging beers at 11.45am. After this we stopped off at a jewellers where we had toe rings put on, very Californian don't you know, and bought a few bits and bobs. Then we went to "Bob's food and liquor" where we purchased an outrageous amount of beer and crashed on Tommy's yacht for the afternoon. In the evening we ate at a fantastic Thai restaurant before heading over to some Irish bar. Why is it that no matter which city in whatever country you visit there is *always* an Irish bar?

In the Irish bar we met a real Irish American. Well, his great grandfather had once been to Dublin and he was wearing a green t-shirt. Sounds like an authentic Irish-American to me. Anyway he greeted us like old friends and mentioned that he'd seen us drinking in the Mexican restaurant at lunchtime. We told him that we hadn't stopped since. :)

The Saturday was the main reason we went over to California. Wine tasting in the Napa valley. Mmmmm. We tried out 4 or five vineyards and sampled superb Chardonnays, a few cheeky Merlot's, a delightfully aged Cabernet Sauvignon and a Pinot Blanc with a hint of diesel fumes and umm umm yes, rotting mackerel ( In a BBC Food & Drink stylee ). We eventually made it back to Benecia a little worse for wear. Demolished a couple of bottles of wine and watched a movie.

After such a hectic Saturday the motto re-raised it's ugly head and we managed a busy Sunday of slip sailing. For the sailingly-challenged amongst us this involves sitting on a yacht which is tied up to the dock drinking more beer and basking in the Californian sun. On the Sunday evening we headed over to a barbecue in Walnut Creek where the Brits were thouroughly thrashed at croquet. Stupid game anyway, that's what I say.

Monday was just a general chill out day before heading back to Oakland airport to catch our flight back to Phoenix.

On Tuesday Nicole went to work heheheheheh, and Jason and I packed up our toys and prepared to head down to Rocky Point in Mexico for a few days of drinking Tequila and not much else. Jason was panicking a little when he couldn't find his visa so he called his lawyer to get a replacement sorted out. It was at this point that his lawyer pointed out that Jason's status had changed to a permanent resident with the status of pending. What this meant was that it was illegal for Jason to leave and re-enter the States until he was a fully fledged permanent resident. :( Scratch one visit to Mexico. The words "bunny" and "very not happy f*ckin a" spring to mind. So a hasty backup plan was formed and the rest of the week went:

Tuesday: Water park and kamikaze death slides.

Wednesday: Hike up Camelback mountain and chill out in Sheldons pool for the afternoon*

Thursday: 18 holes of golf before returning to Jasons and drinking virtually all the alcohol in the house.

Friday: Nurse a hangover and write my memoirs.

* Comedy moment, Sheldon has a diving pool with a springboard. We all returned from the hike and Sheldon took a little run up and a big jump onto his springboard. It was at this moment that the springboard decided it didn't want to play anymore. The bolts at the back snapped and Sheldon executed a near perfect front somersault with a full twist into the water. Utterly unintentional of course. Verr verr funny.

The future,

This weekend we'll be Salt River tubing. This involves getting a *huge* gang of you and lashing a load of inner tubes together before floating down the river for about four hours drinking beer.

Next week will be a heap more skydiving :)

The weekend after we were supposed to be going to Mexico again but Jason won't be allowed to leave the country so we're waiting for inspiration to hit us.