DATE         LOCATION                        NOTES (Full report follows)

26 Jun 05   Lafayette , IN                       Day 11 - Racers' Lunch and Awards Banquet

Lafayette , Indiana

We spent most of the morning relaxing. We later went to a racers lunch held at the Purdue Stadium Press Suite, which gave us a stunning bird's eye view of the Purdue Football Stadium. There we had lunch with all the other race teams and received the final briefings from the race directors and the judges. While we were having lunch, Edgar and Ron went for lunch and walked around downtown Lafayette .

In the evening, we went to the Awards Banquet, which was held in the Ballroom at Purdue University . It was a formal event were all the race teams were recongnized for their participation in the race and the winning teams received their prizes.

The evening was exciting and great. Our guest speaker was Janice Voss, Ph.D., Science Director for the Kepler Space Craft at the NASA AMES Research Cebter. Kepler is scheduled to launch on a Delta II in October, 2007, and will be looking for Earth-size planets around distant stars. Dr. Voss became an astronaut in July 1991. She is qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist. A veteran of five space flights, Dr. Voss has logged over 49 days in space, traveling 18.8 million miles in 779 Earth orbits.

At the end of the evening, we watched a PowerPoint presentation by the Purdue Students capturing all the wonderful moments we experienced throughtout these exciting racing days!

Although the evening was a lot of fun, we could not help but feel sad that it was all over. We feel fortunate to have met such an interesting and elite group of women and to have participated in this Air Race with all of them. When we got here the first day, some of the more experienced racers assured us that once we participated in one race we would be forever hooked. Of course they were right! We are already looking forward to doing it again next year! and to seeing all our new friends again.

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