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February 16th

Ethan

So, how was the car trip? What did you see and do?

I saw snow on the hills! I also saw tumble weed. The car trip was Fun.

The car trip was 400 miles and took 10 hours. It seemed 450 miles and to take 11 hours.

Alan

We left home at 7:30 am. The trip was uneventful. Ethan spent a lot of time playing Nintendo Gameboy. I listened to the tape version of the book "Rocket Boys." I didn't think Ethan heard a word - but after the trip he pretty much understood the entire plot. After 440 miles, 10 hours a couple of state prisons we arrived at the test site. We saw tumbleweed, rattle snake warning signs and Joshua Trees. We particularly liked the "desert tortoise crossing" signs.

We tried the pool at our motel, but the water was about 40 degrees. Ethan was determined to go swimming so I made a deal with him. If he could put his feet in for 5 minutes he could go in. Neither of us made it past 30 seconds. We tried calling Seth, but his phone was busy. I figured he was on the internet via his modem, so we walked over to his hotel to find his room. There was no answer at his door. In the parking lot there was a group of NASA people trouble shooting a piece of equipment. It turned out this was the Space suit team led by Joe Kosmo. The problem was a bad voltage inverter used to power the VCR and video system for the "astrocam." The unit kept eating fuses. I tried my hand but couldn't find anything obviously wrong. While I had my nose on the circuit board, Ethan was geting stuffed with cookies, watching cartoons and getting plied with posters. It turned out that Seth had a spare unit - so we ended up helping even though we couldn't find the problem. We had supper with Jamie and Seth and planned our next day.