Tuesday, September 16: Now that we are all ready for launch, and are pretty much just sitting around waiting for the weather to turn in our favour, our days are somewhat less stressful than they used to be. On Tuesday the 16th, we watched a JPL balloon launch, drove out to see the wind turbines, and had a bar-be-que at Marie's house.

The JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) experiment OMC launched in the morning. They did not require a long flight, and because their experiment is much smaller than BLAST, they flew on a much smaller balloon and were less affected by surface winds. I didn't arrive early enough to see the launch, but surprisingly, the balloon at float can be seen from the ground. The first picture below is taken with the balloon near 80 000 feet, the second on the way down near 55 000 feet.

In the early evening, Don, Ed, Marie, Matt and I embarked on a quest to see the wind turbines, ever-present to the North of the NASA base. After encountering numerous No Trespassing signs, we finally found a side road, and parked at the corner of QR 33 and QR BJ. We decided that trespassing by foot wasn't quite as serious as by car, and walked towards the turbines. The sunset threatened and we knew the windmills were much farther away than they looked, but we continued on. Eventually, however, we came across a rattle snake (first snake we'd seen here), and decided it was an omen. We turned around.

We had a relaxing evening at Marie's. Her "parents" — Mark and Jeff — were away, so we had the place to ourselves. We grilled vegetables and burgers, and watched Ghost World. We were too tired to watch a second movie afterwards, as had been the plan, and all went to our separate homes for nice long sleeps.