Circling the Earth

Speak of the 200-mile running relay you plan on doing next March, and the New York Times publishes an article the next day about such events. That’s me. Tipping off the New York Times. Oh yeah.

STS-118 had a beautiful launch yesterday and will be spending the next two weeks circling the earth. I’m not working this mission so I simply watched the launch from the conference room down the hall with a few coworkers. However, this is the last mission in a long while that will have no Sarah involvement. I’ll be working the launch of STS-120 in October, and working the launch of STS-122 in December. I’ll be helping my trainee work her first launch for STS-123 in February. Things will get extremely busy in April, when I work the launch of STS-124 and then work the rendezvous two days later. Later in 2008, I’ll be working one of the “off” shifts for both STS-125 (the Hubble flight) and STS-126; by “off” shift, I mean the non-rendezvous shift. That means my work will be minimal, but hey, I’ll still be supporting.

That means I won’t have a mission off until STS-127. Then, if all goes well with my training and with the flight schedule, I look to be in line to be assigned as the lead Rendezvous GPO for STS-128 sometime in 2009. That’s when you will finally get to see me on TV. It will be my one shining moment before the shuttle program goes away. 2009 seems far away, but I suppose it will get here eventually.

Until then, I have a lot more reading to do.

I saved this until last so I can sneak it in: I officially upgraded from the half to the full marathon today. I signed up for the Half a couple months ago before I’d thought about joining BAF. Now, it seems hypocritical to say I’m training for a marathon when I’m only signed up for the half. I hesitated for a bit, because after my first marathon in 2005, I told myself that my next one would be somewhere else. Not Houston. But I guess I was wrong. I am officially signed up for Houston. It will be my second marathon.