Tim Sholtis is in the background, crouching down, as I am in the foreground. The entrance to the capsule is behind all of us. I am wearting the dark blue Air Force light jacket. None of us is wearing his "dickie," the color scarf that snapped in the back and indicated which Minot squadron you were a member of: blue (742nd), red (740th) or green (741st). The instructor shop crews wore yellow; stand board crews wore orange. You can only see the name tag of Captain Bullock and Captain Sholtis. The guy sitting next to me was a model airplane nerd and Sci-Fi geek. When we left Vandenberg, he'd bought a ton of paperback novels. He gave them to me because he would have exceeded the weight limit, even in those days, with all that he was bringing back to Minot.
We departed Santa Maria airport on an Air West F-27A for LAX. From there we would have taken either a United or Continental DC-10 to Denver. From Denver, it was almost always a Frontier Airlines 737-200 for Minot, with an occasional stop at Bismark.
But, of course, we still had the launch to perform the night before we left.
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