By now if you are at ALL interested in all this, you will have seen WAY better pictures than these. These are mainly to tell you what it was like for me (and somewhat Martin) and to kinda prove We Were There When History Was Made blah blah blah. Below is the first picture I took, but before that a lot went on in the dark.

The first thing was dragging tons of stuff to set up a little area for ourselves in the dark. I am NOT in good shape and 48 hours later I'm still sore. Sad, huh? Also, we had a New Yorker a few feet away who knew in his heart of hearts that everyone within eatshot would have this experienced mightily enhanced by hearing loud 70's music played at them. We tried to have the Civil Air Patrol Nazi-ettes ask him to turn it down, but apparently they weren't allowed. We actually asked him to, but he was unafraid due to the numerous substances making this day particularly special to him. The morning was also windy as all f***. A few of the outlying porta potties blew over. Ergh. I knew exactly how Ladypixel must feel every weekend with lots of work to pack in, lots of work to pack out, and buttloads of dust inbetween.

It didn't all suck before dawn, although granted things were a lot better AFTER dawn. We still had all our tech that we packed in to keep us company, or at least the tech we weren't afraid of getting dust in. Anyways, everything picked up at dawn. Look! There's dawn! YAYYYYY!!!

After dawn, everyone got to know their neighbors better and it became a lot more community than a bunch of every-man-for-himselves trying to stake the best location. Speaking of best location, we got a PRIME spot right by the fence. And below is my representation of Geek Town USA.

Lookie!! White Knight taking off with Spaceship One slung under her tummy! W00t!! Everyone cheered when they took off safely. Well, hell, everyone cheered everytime anything happened. I think a couple people cheered dignitaries being helicoptered in.

Starship following after to help out with stuff, take pics, etc.

As they spiraled up to the point where White Knight was to release the ship, we lost them for the better part of an hour. Occasionally we would get lucky and find a bright white contrail pointing out how far everything had gotten, but most of the time we weren't that lucky.

Finally White Knight dropped Spaceship One and she coasted a bit before firing the rockets. She did it pretty much directly in line with the sun so without exceptional camerage and skills you got nothing, photo-wise. Thankfully Martin had at least the skills if not the camerage to get a shot of Spaceship One firing her way into space. Yeah, it looks like he's pushing her up with the contrail, but be thankful we got the shot at ALL.

She made it! W00t! After getting past the official border of space, she heads back down. That's Spaceship One leading the pack on the right, followed by Starship and the military chase plane.

And here she comes, in to land! We were unable to get an actual landing picture, but here she is on her way to fame, escorted mightily because her windows were so small that she needed extra eyes around to navigate by.

The people in White Knight were obviously stoked. They did a fly over with a hard bank over the crowd and everyone cheered and waved summore.

Oh, heck, EVERYONE was stoked! Here's Starship and the two other camera/assistance planes doing a more official flyover.

Remember how I said we had a great place? After doing the official congratulatory stuff by the hanger they towed Spaceship One right in front of us with Mike Melvill on top! We was SO happy! He hammed it up, dancing a jig, taking pictures of the crowd, etc.... BTW, if anyone knows if any of Mike's pictures are online, can you tell me where? We're probably right in front.

Aaaaand the pretty much required This Is Why We Need a Better Camera Shot. Melvill saw a guy holding up a sign he thought was the coolest and had him run onto the tarmac to hand it to him. (THAT would never happen at Nasa...). Unfortunately, the picture didn't capture the sign well enough to read it, so I approximated it after this picture....

Cute sign, innit? If you know of any pictures online where you can read it, please let me know, again.

Anyways, after that we hauled all our stuff back to the car, sweating like little piggies and went home, stopping only for gas and uber-coffee-drinks. Ta Da! Comments on my livejournal, please.