1251h: In a conference room at the Four Seasons hotel for our pre-flight orientation. They split us up into 3 groups and each group had to wear a certain colour of sock: gold, silver or blue. We were in the gold group. Each group had a "team leader" which was an employee assigned to babysit us during our flight. The socks allowed them to easily keep track of who was in their group.
1352h: SWAG! Socks, t-shirt, and now a flight suit! It even came with its own vomit bag in a pocket.
1430h: Even Jesus would die quickly of exposure in this heat. Las Vegas was 35°C or 37°C that afternoon, but the black tarmac combined with bright sun and no breeze raised the air temperature to over 50°C on the runway at the executive terminal of McCarran Airport. The heat was smothering and gave me a massive headache.
1433h: We were told not to take any photographs of anything other than our aircraft. There were a bunch of private aircraft and some military jets we were not supposed to photograph. We were in line to board the plane.
1433h: Our aircraft was a 727 with some minor modifications. Some you can see here: very few windows, rear entrance. On
the way up the stairs we were very close to a lot of wiring and
tubing and lots of internal parts of the aircraft that passengers are not
normally exposed to. Since the aircraft was sitting on the hot runway
with it's rear open, it got uncomfortably hot inside.
1437h: You can see more differences here: There were only 6 rows of seats. The front 75% of the aircraft had no seats and had a layer of padding covering all surfaces. There were no overhead bins. There were ropes along the side.
1516h: We sat for a half hour while they set up 6 video cameras and prepared for takeoff.
1523h: Here we are. The plane is the right altitude to start the parabolas. We are just waiting for the notice of the first parabola. This is the last photo I took before we got off the plane. There was a professional photographer on board taking lots of photos. As of the writing of this, I only have the low-resolution versions of the photos and none of them have time-stamps.
Here's another angle of us waiting for the first parabola.
If I look shocked in this photo it's because I AM! It's very shocking to be floating around without your lifelong friend: gravity.
This is Moon gravity. We both tried to do push-ups. Lisa's tiny girl arms have no trouble with the reduced gravity and my massive muscles are so strong, just the act of doing a push-up throws me up into the air uncontrollably.
We were told not to jump and Lisa is learning why. But you can totally do flying ninja kicks at moon gravity.
I think this was our last Moon parabola. Most photos of me just look like I'm falling down. You can see Lisa in the background here doing a flip. Her hair was flaring in every direction like Medusa's snakes, and she was constantly laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing as she spun in the air.
Too many supermen. The idea was that we would all push off and fly like superman. But we timed it poorly and Lisa took off before the rest of us. I got squished between her feet and some teenage girl who couldn't even fly straight.
Without gravity to keep things ordered, Lisa's hair looked like a peacock's tail.
Shortly before this photo was taken, Lisa and I tried to quickly crawl around the outside walls of the cabin. If you move fast enough, your inertia will hold you against the wall. You can see Lisa approaching the floor. When I started, my feet quickly got away from me and I ended up standing on the ceiling. You can see me there happily hanging around upside down.
In this photo, you can see Lisa and me in the background. We were trying to dance, but I couldn't get Lisa to straighten her legs. It was tough to get enough space for two people to completely stretch out without kicking someone in the face.
What you don't realize inside the bounds of normal gravity is that when you sit on something you have an enormous amount of potential energy stored in the elasticity of your butt, and the cushion it's on. Remember, it's holding you up, which requires that the cushion push you the exact amount to counter your weight. I weigh 160lbs, so when I'm lying on a cushion, it's pushing "up" with 160lbs of force. When gravity is suddenly removed from the equation, the cushion continues to push you up with 160lbs of force until the cushion returns to it's normal shape. This causes you to be thrown upwards at the beginning of a parabola. Here's a shot of us hitting the ceiling because of that force.
Here's our attempt at a "space kiss". The camera-man kept yelling at us to look at the camera. It's awkward to kiss when you are both looking in the same direction.
Here's our group shot after our 16th parabola. I'm the guy over at the left wall holding my mouth so I don't puke.
1861h: On our way back to The Wild Wild West hotel, we passed by the Luxor casino. It has a full-scale replica of the Great Sphinx of Giza and Khafra's pyramid.
1818h: She was the oldest woman I've ever kissed. Well, oldest cat-woman. Wait, is it a woman?
1826h: One of the many sci-fi themed money-stealing machines.
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