This was one long day. I went with Tom Kalasky of the Project Office to meet the LCU Manassas at 2:30 a.m. on its return from Lae Island. The trip back was pretty rough, and both the radiosonde crew and the ship's crew were fighting sea sickness. My trip was a lot shorter. It was a beautiful moon-lit morning, so once I got moving it didn't seem too bad to be pedaling through Kwaj by flashlight and then riding in the back of a step van to the Small Boat Marina boat ramp. When we got there, the Manassas had dropped its ramp and the bulldozer was driving onto the land. With that weight gone, the ship rose in the water and moved in closer. Then the pallet handler off-loaded three pallets of empty helium cylinders, which had been used to fill the balloons. Finally, the intrepid radiosonde crew trudged up to the step van with their personal luggage. After dropping them off at the Pacific Bachelor's Quarters for a well-deserved snooze, we returned to Building 1009 (you can't take the vans "home" for the night, as Tom had to tell someone yesterday). It was "only" two hours until the 5:30 a.m. forecast discussion, so we both started in on the paperwork and other tasks for our respective days.

Unlike yesterday, we had reasonable echoes on the radar screen this morning, so it made the decision to fly a lot easier. Unfortunately, the Convair developed a major problem with the right propellor shortly after take-off and it had to make a quick return to the runway. They landed without incident in the company of the entire complement of five airfield fire trucks and a helicopter standing by in case they ditched in the ocean short of the runway. In general, I would say that Kwaj has public safety facilities that far exceed what you would expect in a similarly sized community in the States. Presumably this is driven by what needs to be protected: a major airfield, a substantial harbor, fuel storage areas, and the various laboratories, offices, warehouses, and residences. The firehouse has a really neat design. It sits between one of the main roads and the parking ramp for the airfield. The parking bays for the trucks are drive-through (i.e., doors at both ends), and two trucks deep. The airfield equipment is parked facing out on the airfield side, and the regular equipment is parked facing out on the street side. This centralizes the whole operation and makes it easy for any of the equipment to go either direction, as needed.

Needless to say, I took some time off between lunch and the afternoon forecast briefing. That allowed me to accomplish important stuff, like a swim, a light sunburn, a nap, and souvenirs. Yes, my time here is getting short and I hadn't taken the time to enrich the local merchants. Tomorrow my replacement arrives and I need to reserve as much time as possible for making sure the transition is smooth before I leave on Friday.

The clock on my laptop computer is still on Eastern Daylight Time, and as I write it tells me that my daughter will be getting up for her second day of sixth grade in an hour or two, almost half a world away.

George Huffman