Pictures from JP Aerospace's May 5, 2001 Dark Sky Station flight

I don't have many pictures from Sunday. My camera's battery died.

On our South Bay team, Dave M had run into a problem with something he had driven over during the previous day's recovery. He had two flat tires. Adding insult to injury, he discovered that his spare tire had been stolen some time in the past few weeks (before the trip.) Fortunately, Craig from JPA had a tire plug kit and an air compressor on his truck. It took some effort but Dave was good to go.

We broke up camp and drove off as a convoy. Since the other 4 members of the South Bay Team had only driven across the playa but not set foot on it, we detoured off to go show them what it's like. I had described the optical illusions of flying and hovering cars (when they're right on the mirage terminator from your point of view) and we very soon saw a "hovering van" parked out there.

We stopped to take a look and it turned out they were a couple whose radiator had overheated and needed water. We had plenty of extra water from our camping supplies, which we re-filled their radiator with. So it looks like we started and ended the trip by rescuing people. Not a bad way to do it...

(1488x992 579K) (500x333 29K)	Gary is standing next to my truck where the camp used to be. Camp Silicon is gone. The desert is returning to its normal desolation. Everyone has double-checked that we left no trace and even picked up some litter left by previous users of the site.
(1488x992 603K) (500x333 29K)	The JPA camp is all packed up and the convoy is preparing to go.

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Copyright (c) 2001 Ian Kluft