Thanks for your confidence.....but....

That's right!  I did.  I appreciate all of you that had such confidence in me that I was going to be fine, but let's face it, I have been sick on a roller coaster!  I have to say, I was pretty confident in myself mentally that I was not going to get sick...but my stomach had other plans....
On the first flight day, there were at least 3 of us that got sick.  I am proud to say that I lasted until parabola 20.  At this moment, I threw up in my puke bag, gave it to the doctor, and then I was fine!  My team mates were worried about me but I felt fine right after I got it out of my system.  Now I know your next question is, "Did it fly everywhere??!!"  Well here is your answer:  I started throwing up in hyper gravity and the doctor held me down while I continued to throw up in zero gravity.  Since I had my puke bag (thank goodness) so the puke did not fly anywhere (thank goodness!).  Now, if I had missed my puke bag, I assume the puke probably would have floated in whatever direction I projected to until it either hit someone, or the hyper gravity started and then it would fall to the bottom of the plane.  Then the doctor and/or flight attendant cleaned it up. 
The next time I puked I believe it was during parabola 31.  This time my stomach was very upset with me and done.  It did not want me to be on this plane any longer....lol.  So, sadly I had to go to the back where the seats were and let my teammates finish the experiment.  I felt so sick....and being in the seat didn't really make me feel much better.  Now I felt like I was on a roller coaster; but at least I was stable. 
There was an up side to this though...parabola 32 was the last zero gravity parabola and we were then doing 4 martian and 4 lunar ones.  I sadly missed the free feeling of the martian and lunar parabolas but I did get to see everyone in the plane experience them.  THIS WAS MY MOMENT....I suddenly remembered Doug telling me to take time to really experience what was going on around us.  I was at the back of the plane, watching everyone in it jumping and floating around.  They were so excited, happy, surprised, amazed.....I saw so many emotions throughout the plane.  I remember thinking.......
'How amazing....how lucky am I to experience this and be apart of this awesome opportunity.  I am so fortunate.  I will remember this and I can't wait to tell this experience to everyone possible for the rest of my life.'
.....So yes, I did 'PUKE FOR SCIENCE', and 'I WOULD DEFINITELY DO IT AGAIN' if I get the opportunity.  :)

Friday....last flight day.

I have to apologize for my delay in this post....I admittedly got a little tired and overwhelmed with everything that I took a few days off.  That being said......let me talk about Friday, our last flight day.

Friday, OUR LAST FLIGHT DAY

Today our other two flight members, Veronica and Amber, and our mentor Jamie fly today testing the Projectile launcher.  They we all very excited!  Amber was a little nervous but we all knew she would do great!  Right when we get to the hanger, they go to their first meeting and get briefed on the safety procedures as we did as well as get their meds to prepare for flight.  Jamie switched the experiments out the day before right after our flight so everything was ready. 
Doug briefing the team for the flight.

 The flow chart to brief us for our flight.

Here they are on their way into G-Force One.

Here is a pic they took on the plane right before take off.

Maggie, Alison and I were so excited for our team members and anxiously waited watching their flight online.  It was very cool that we could watch it on www.flightaware.com.  Here is the route of their flight.

As we waited, we wanted to get our team member some pizza and drinks to celebrate!  So we ran and picked up pizza and drinks from Sonic (since they were all craving soda and we were advised not to drink it before the flight). 
There flight was much faster than ours and we almost missed their homecoming!  As we pulled into the parking lot and ran to the runway, we saw the plane landing!  So we ran, put the pizza and drinks down, picked up the markers and poster boards to make signs, and ran to the runway!  Luckily we had enough time to make their homecoming signs and watch them come in. 

They all did great!  The weather was great weather for flying so their flight time was only 1.7 flight hours, where ours was 2.5 flight hours.  Jamie said that a lot of people did get sick on this flight...more than usual.  Thankfully, our team is awesome and none of them got sick at all!  Here are some pictures from their flight.

They really enjoyed the flight and got a large amount of research done.  Their research was a little different because they were measuring the projectile launching in hypergravity.  Hypergravity is when you feel more pressure on your because you are defying the pull of gravity.  This was when the plane was flying up.  They even looked out the window!!!  Which the experts do not really advise because the sight can really confuse your body and brain. 

Aren't these pictures amazing....it became even more surreal to me when I saw these two pictures of how high we really were.....speechless....

SAD TO SAY GOODBYE....

Now was time for us to turn in our flight suits and say our appreciation and goodbyes....we were getting very sad.  But!  We HAD to take some awesome pics first!

Our awesome team lead Ashle and Sharon bought us a cake and gave us certificates for completing the program!

I felt so thankful and honored to be apart of something so amazing with such great people.  We wanted to show how much we appreciated this experience so the night before we all worked together and made Jamie and Ashle collages.  They loved them!

Sharon also gave Jamie and Sara (the team mentors and coordinators) PSTI patches and pins.  They really liked them as well. 

This program was definItely a moment I will remember the rest of my life.  I feel so fortunate to have been selected to be apart of this and could not thank Jamie, Ashle, and Sharon for working so hard to make this possible for us.  IF you are still wondering IF I PUKED.....stay tuned for videos and the results......COMING SOON!