Day 11 (Friday, March 2)

Yet another scrub for the Caltech launch!  :( :( :(  This one got much closer -- they had the rocket on the rail and raised it vertical, then aborted about a half hour before launch.  This time the culprit was the high winds…both at the surface and at high altitudes.  If the winds are strong but steady, usually the launch can go as planned, but if there's a lot of direction-changing then it's not possible to fly.

Today we're flying back to California -- thus the sudden blog frenzy since I've finally got a little spare time on the plane to catch up!  This will just be a short weekend trip; we want to get right back here Monday to continue the alignment tests.  I'll be happy for the couple days off, especially since my favorite person in the whole world will be picking me up from the airport!  I haven't gotten to see him much over the last couple of months and I really hope he will come to visit me in New Mexico too!!  :)

I had a late flight so I had a little time to kill in El Paso before heading to the airport.  So I decided to take a little side trip to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, just across the Rio Grande.  I parked on the U.S. side and walked over the bridge connecting El Paso with downtown Juarez.  The winds were so strong on that bridge that sand kept flying in my eyes!  I only had about an hour to spend in Juarez so I just went for a little walk down the main commercial stretch and stopped for a cerveza in a little bar.  Coming back across the bridge you go through U.S. customs and immigration, kind of like at the airport.