Sunday, September 28; 7:00 PM: The Sun was setting and BLAST had been at float for about 8 hours, and I had slept 2 hours in the last 36. I decided it was time for some more sleep. I went home and made dinner, watched an hour of TV, and generally tried to keep myself awake until 9:00 so that I could talk to Susi. The phone rang just after 9:00... but it wasn't Susi. It was David telling me that I was leaving for Holbrook in 2 hours.

Realizing that my flight back to Vancouver was only 36 hours away, I decided that I should take the time to start packing. I did that for a while, then had a quick shower and called the highbay to get someone to pick me up.

We took off in the Raytheon-Beech King Air, NSBF's other plane, at about 11:15. The King Air is slower than the Conquest, but a little more comfortable. And it has polarized windows! You rotate the inner pane to darken the window. The windows didn't hold my attention for very long, however, and I slept most of the way. We arrived in Holbrook, AZ shortly before midnight local time. We spent about 2 hours setting up, then got rooms at a motel for a few hours of sleep, anticipating that we wouldn't be needed until the morning. My wake-up call came at 7:30. I decided a quick breakfast was more important than a shower, so I quickly got dressed and went to the Denny's next door.

Back to the shack at the airport shortly after 8:00. It turned out that the gondola would never get out of range of the Ft. Sumner station, so we weren't even needed. The gondola was cut down from the balloon at about 1:00, so we only had to sit around for a few hours. I used the time to write my Launch website. The NSBF crew quickly took down the antenna dish from the trailer roof, as the downrange station would not be used again this season, and we were off.

The Holbrook airport does not have jet fuel, so we zipped over to Winslow, about 50 miles West of Holbrook, to fuel up. We were met by the airport attendant, who rolled up in his Barbie-and-Ken-studded golf cart. Just after he got out of his cart, I noticed that it was rolling away. I said "Hey, looks like your cart's getting away from you" to which he turned around and said "Oh yeah, ha ha!". Rob, the co-pilot, found a block to put under the wheel. I wonder if he would have done something if we had just let it go...

Next stop, Albuquerque, to fuel up once again. The pilots wanted to have the tank as full as possible upon our return to Ft. Sumner, as jet fuel isn't available there, either. I hadn't been aware of this, but small planes use the same runways as commercial jets at international airports. And at this airport, the same runaway as military jets. We saw two F18s land and some other enormous military jet take off as we were waiting. As we pulled into the small-plane terminal, we saw a jet much bigger than the surrounding planes, with a tour bus next to it. I thought at first a sports team, then decided it was probably a band. We found out a little later that it was Cher! We missed her, though... the bus rolled away a few minutes after we deplaned. Too bad.

Finally, back to Ft. Sumner by about 7:30. I had a quick dinner, finished my packing, and went to bed at about 10:30. Up at 3:15 and off to Albuquerque for my flight home to Vancouver, for lots of sleep.