Okay, maybe not geographically the heart of Texas, but close enough. We landed at Biggs Army Airfield near El Paso, Texas. The flight seemed really quick and I'll tell you something, flying with NASA pilots beats flying commercial any day. These guys don't mess around! If we're banking left, we are BANKING LEFT!

NASA pilots are also patient enough to let me take their picture while flying.

The pathfinder plane that we were all flying in is a NASA C-9 airplane. We had the weather officers and quite a few from the shuttle team on board with us and we were flying about 100 miles in front of Atlantis and the SCA. Here’s how the C-9 looks from the outside.

Here's what it looks like on the inside. Not necessarily plush, but they did pass out Fritos and soda.

Like I said, we're in Texas at our first stop. We landed here at Biggs at 11:22 am MDT. The shuttle team now has meetings all afternoon where they'll keep a close eye on the weather forecasts and plot out the rest of our route. Here are some pics and a quick video of Atlantis and the SCA landing. 

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/3587843200/ 

We're going to stay here overnight and if all goes as planned and the weather cooperates we'll be on our way in the morning. 

The early morning.