Departure Day--and we're off! There really isn't much to say about today. Stacy, Dan, Jana and I were driven to the San Jose airport by Andrew Thurber, one of the ASPIREites from last year. We met up with Craig and Jen, and checked in with no problem.

Jim (who won the ro-sham-bo contest) and Stacy were briefly excited at the prospect of the 2 First Class upgrades that our group had received from NSF, until we were tauntingly told they were only good for DOMESTIC flights, and the whole plane was classified as First Class on the LA leg of our trip (which was a gross exaggeration). Dan got busted going through security. They apparently thought he looked like a terrorist, so they confiscated his 5mm Allen wrench and his tweezers. Go figure...

At least we had two batches of cookies to keep us company, one set (3 kinds!) made by Andrew, and some appropriately-shaped (octopus, starfish, penguins, seals, and Antarctic-continent) cookies presented by Henry Kaiser, who had previously been to the ice under the Artists and Writers program. After the mild panic (at least for me) of trying to get everything done in order to leave, it was a relief to finally get on the plane and slow down.

Then we flew for awhile, and landed in LA. Faced with the prospect of the upcoming day of airplane food, we decided we needed to fortify ourselves. We ended up at the futuristic Encounter resturant, built in the old control tower at LAX. We ate some fine food, and had our first toast to the success of our upcoming trip. Then we got back on the plane, and flew for a long time........