Well, two years is much less time then what I wanted, but so it goes. So it goes. Farewell, Diomede–I’ll miss you. I’ll miss my students. I’ll miss those kiddos. A lot. I’ll miss my coworkers who also are some of my best friends. I’ll miss the store and the summers and the smiles and the friends and the wild experiences and the friday night ball and the birds and the crab and the eskimo food. There are many more things I am thinking and feeling about having to leave Diomede; it all needs time to mull about and settle, though. Right now I’m light and the ‘thinking’ and heavy on the ‘feeling,’ and the feelings are largely composed of sadness and frustration.

One chapter ends, another begins. While I am sad to have to leave the island, I definitely am excited to work in Lake & Pen, and I’m excited about lots of flying, reading, writing, music, and drawing this summer. Well, ok. Realistically, probably only two or three of those things (I tend to say I’m going to do more then I actually do).

Also: an hour before our ride arrived the weather had cleared out enough and I launched my rocket. The cloud ceiling was at maybe 1500-2000, and she punched through it quicker then you can say bub’s your uncle. The sound was truly awesome. Launching big rockets is something I would like to do more often.

This is what it’s like to fly in to Nome in a Bolkow Bo-105 in the springtime. Moderate breeze, good pilot with a steady hand.

Pardon the two ‘oh I should rotate ninety degrees here’ moments. I thought it’d be cool to be able to see what the pilot was doing better, but when I’m taking video I tend to forget that I can’t just, like, rotate part of the video so that it’s all right side up. I don’t shoot video very often.

Also, this is a pretty good approximation of the view from the back seat:

She’s finished. Permanent-marker coloring job, parachute and shock cored rigged and attached, motor loaded.

Today (the last day of school!) was rocket day, the kids fired off all of their rockets, I didn’t launch mine though–visibility wasn’t too good, ceiling of maybe 400′. I’m hoping for a clear morning. In the past half hour (it’s 2:30am now) things started to clear up a little bit, so there’s hope!

Also, there are a couple pictures of the fleet of my students. All launches were successful! I have more photos, but they are all of students working on their rockets, so I shouldn’t post them (privacy). I don’t have any photos of the launches, as I was rather busy at the time :)