We drew names to see who was going to get the back seat rides and I was one of the lucky ones (no, I was not the one doing the drawing). I was picked to fly in a T-38 on the way out. As it turned out, our White Sands tour was planned to start bright and early Wednesday morning. But, since the facility is a fair distance from El Paso, our class needed to arrive Tuesday evening. What it boiled down to was that the four of us in the T-38's had all day Tuesday to get to El Paso. Believe me; we took advantage of this training opportunity. We figured if we took off at 8:00 in the morning we could get four hops in and get to El Paso the same time the rest of class was arriving by Southwest.

Our first leg was up to Amarillo. After getting gas we continued on to Grand Junction, Colorado. Boy, were the Rocky Mountains a gorgeous and impressive sight, all covered in snow. We had lunch in Grand Junction (pizza at the airport) and then headed down to Las Vegas. Naturally, we planned our route to head south before heading west (check your maps). The best part was, we didn't even have to ask... When we got close to the Grand Canyon, the air traffic controllers cleared is to descend to 15,000 feet and take a canyon tour. Yeeha! We had another brief stop in Las Vegas - just gas, no gambling - and then headed over to El Paso. That netted us 5.5 hours of flying time. I am definitely ahead of the game, so far, this quarter in terms of getting my required time in. We arrived about half an hour before the rest of the gang did.

I don't know how the pilots felt, but after all that flying, I was exhausted. We did a formation flight the entire time. Each leg we traded off who was the lead plane and who was the wingman. For a lot of it, we backseaters were trying to stay in formation. Not a pretty sight. I know the pilots can form flight with their eyes closed, but rest of us have to work hard to produce some marginal results. So, when we finally got out to Las Cruses, which is not exactly close to El Paso, I was ready to call it a night. But, before I did, we decided to go out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I have to say, that cold beer I had certainly hit the spot. I hit the sack as soon as we got back to the hotel.

Wednesday morning started early since the drive out to White Sands took an hour or so. After the welcome from the Center Director, we headed out to tour some of the facilities and labs. We started with a tour of the hypervelocity impact labs. They have some of the most impressive cameras. I would really like to understand how these cameras work. They can take an unbelievable number of pictures every second, something like a million frames a second (I am not exaggerating). I had no idea cameras like this existed. Needless to say, the slow motion video of their experiments is quite spectacular.

After lunch we went over to what is called the White Sands Space Harbor. This is the area out on the white sand (you definitely need sunglasses) where the Shuttle could make an emergency landing, if required. The have packed the sand down for a runway and they have enough support equipment to take care of the Shuttle and crew should there be a landing. The Shuttle actually did land there once early in the program as a test. The runway at the Space Harbor is also the location where the pilots do their Shuttle Training Aircraft approaches. While we were out touring these facilities, some of the other astronaut pilots were doing some practice approaches. That was a sight to see. We were right at the side of the runway where they make their closest approach (about 20 feet off the ground). It is so impressive to see the airplane zooming down at a very steep angle (roughly a 20 degree glideslope) and then skim the ground at 200 knots before pulling up and zooming back into the sky.

Thursday we started our tour in the propulsion test area. This is the location where the smaller engines of the Shuttle are tested (you may recall that the main Shuttle engines are tested at the Stennis Space Center). At White Sands there are very large chambers where they can simulate being "at altitude" for the engine tests. They put the engines in the chambers and then pump the chambers down to a vacuum for the test. It is a pretty impressive set up. Following that we got a limited tour of the ground facility for the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. Most of that facility is classified, so we actually didn't get to see that much. But, it is the ground site that talks to the satellites that talk to the Shuttle and Station.

Thursday afternoon we had a new twist to our usual tour. We broke into groups and went out and talked to school kids. That really was a lot of fun. I was in a group of five and we first went to an elementary school. The whole school was at an assembly and my classmates and I did a short presentation and then answered questions. It was neat to see how enthusiastic the kids were. After that school, we headed over to a middle school. We were supposed to talk to an assembly there also, but it had been cancelled. So, we split up and spent a short amount of time in several classrooms, mostly just chitchatting with the kids and answering their questions. I also did a short interview with one of the local news stations. I think that was the most bizarre interview that I have had to date. All the reporter wanted to talk about was how I felt "being a woman in a man's world." I have no idea where she was coming from, but she was clearly not interested in anything NASA was doing. Too bad for her, I know the stats on the numbers of women vs. men employed at NASA, and it isn't anything like she was implying. Maybe she just finished watching the movie Apollo13 and thought that the movie reflected current day NASA. I don't know, but I doubt anything I said got on the air, since I didn't fall for her trap.

After the school visits we met back up with the rest of our class and made a mad dash for El Paso. We were hoping to get to the airport in time to catch an earlier flight back to Houston. We were originally scheduled to get in about midnight. But, luck was with us and we got home about 10 pm. You have to love Southwest and their flexibility.

Friday I was to fly again, but the pilot had a cold. So, I spent my day reading and preparing for my classes next week. I got a lot read, which was good, since now I won't have to spend my whole weekend studying.