After the Skylab II mission, which splashed-down in the Pacific Ocean on September 25, 1973, there were numerous postflight duties to perform, including writing a detailed Crew Report, debriefings with engineering, management, and congressional entities, as well as numerous public relations events with the general public. For the Backup Crew, training for the Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), however, began soon after Skylab amenities were nearly complete. In fact, by November, 1973, we were already in the Soviet Union training with the cosmonauts for the ASTP mission, now nearly two years away from liftoff. In preparation for the ASTP flight, we trained in Star City, USSR, during three visits of three weeks each. The cosmonauts also trained in Houston, Texas, on a similar schedule. Astronauts were learning to speak Russian, and cosmonauts were learning English. Both teams interchanged classroom training, mission simulation, and actual hardware familiarization, as well as hosting family dinners and public relations events not only in Texas and other States, but also around Moscow and the Soviet republics. Exposure to history, culture, and lifestyles were experienced on a daily basis, and we traded visits to space facilities, historic cities, and cultural events. Engineering and Mission Control teams in the US and USSR also worked very hard to solve compatibility problems that arose due to spaceflight engineering, operational, and flight control differences. There are many stories to tell about preparation for this mission during which the Apollo and Soyuz were docked together at opposite ends of a Docking Module for five days in July, 1975. It is noteworthy to mention all of this occurred under the watchful eye of the Soviet KGB and at a time when the two nations were operating under the strategic policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Although I did not fly the mission, training for it and experiencing the foreign intrigue and its associated spinoff were among the most interesting opportunities of my career. The ASTP mission was the last to use the Saturn rocket and Apollo spacecraft.