So, I've had an amazing month of vacation between my internships in Huntsville and Florida!!! Here's the day-by-day story!
Wednesday, May 6
Mike flies to Huntsville. I went to the airport to pick him up, and then we went back to my apartment to drop things off. Then we headed down to the Huntsville Library for the Grotto meeting. It was another meeting about White Nose Syndrome. Mike got to meet all my crazy caving friends, and we looked at the merchandise table where Mike got a bat magnet for his car and we both got complementary kids caving books. ^____^
We had Beauregards for dinner, with a good little group of cavers! I think there were six or seven of us there. Sabrina kept making jokes about the waitress spitting in our food..... because she accidentally said something that could have been seen as rude even though she totally didn't mean it like that.... ^^;; All around it was a really fun time.
Sabrina took us to Kroger we could go shopping for breakfast food and caving food for tomorrow.
Thursday, May 7
We attempted to get up early so we don't cut anything short..... fail....
We spent all day looking all over Huntsville for second-hand boots for Mike. He has boots at home, so there was really no use in buying new expensive ones. We looked in about five different thrift stores, but to no avail. We found more baby hiking boots than normal ones.... >.< grrr. (And no, Mike, baby hiking boots will not fit me!) So, we ended up going to Payless and buying hiking boots there (hey we match!), and we made it back just in time to change and get picked up by Nathan to go CAVING!!!!!!!!
CAVING
Sabina made a crazy mixed CD of all kinds of different music. The first song was the theme for A-Team, which has been our caving adventure theme for a while. Then there was the ska version of Hotel California (the only reason that song was on there was because Mike was wearing his I <3 SKA shirt the night before). This song is now epic because we remember Sabrina bobbing up and down in the front seat. Mike said it reminded him of whack-a-mole (since Sabrina's only a little taller than me. Only a little!!!!) Sabrina drove, and along the way Nathan set up the playlist for his special show. Anyway, caving itself didn't work out so well..... we wanted to go to Tumbling Rock, because that's probably my favorite cave, and it’s definitely the one I know the best. Nathan was gonna do his Standard Light and Sound Show. Unfortunately, the gate was locked with a new combination that Nathan didn't know. Poor Nathan was really upset.... We tried for a really long time... So we decided to head over to Limrock instead. On the way, we got a little lost because there were two signs pointing in opposite directions that both said North..... (o_O) but when we finally made it only to find Limrock flooded. We thought about pushing it until Nathan got about as far back as you can go without going under water--probably no more than 40 feet and said there was no way we could do it. I was pretty thankful actually because I was REALLY scared to try to push it. So we ended up taking some pictures of the entrance and Nathan got an AMAZING picture!!!!! Sabrina and Nathan also presented me with a caving journal and a list of all our adventures. ^^ After all the photos, we went to IHOP and had our traditional hot chocolate and dinner. It was a lot of fun. Sabrina made the Pancake Pit, and then made some interesting combinations of syrups, sauces, etc... (which resulted in a really nasty smell and probably even nastier taste--I took Sabrina's word for it... she actually ate it!!!!) Finally it was time for us to say goodbye. Very sad and hard to do... I'm glad to have made such good friends, and I can't wait to see them again!!!
Friday, May 8
Today we slept in a bit, and later went to lunch with Danielle and Casey. They suggested we ask Nathan to give us a tour of the Space and RocketCenter, since it's so expensive to go to and all. So, we bugged Nathan to give us his special tour, and it was really cool. I got to see parts of the center (like the space camp part) that I've never seen before. Plus, we got Nathan's random awesome facts, too!
After the SpRocketCenter, we went to the Botanical Gardens to walk around for a while. It was very nice, but we both agree that Denver's is about the best we've seen. There was also a "Big Bugs" exhibit there, which was pretty cool except for the giant spider......
We didn't know what else to do, so we decided to go to the mall and hang out for a while. Orange Julius and ice cream sounded really good, but we couldn't find an Orange Julius, unfortunately, so we settled for just ice cream. ^_____________^
Then, we went home, made ramen and watched Hana Yori Dango! Yay!
Saturday, May 9
Today was packing and loading the car and cleaning. I was in a big of a freaking-out-mode today, but we got everything loaded in the car (an amazing feat if we do say so ourselves (^__^)v) We got the keys turned in, filled up on gas and off we went at 6:22 pm, headed for FLORIDA!!!!!!! We stopped at Wendys for dinner in Bermingham. Along the way, we saw the moon too. It was sooooo big and orange and covered in clouds so we couldn't recognize it at first. It was really really awesome! :D :D
Sunday, May 10
Still..... driving..... until... 3:30 am.... Actually, driving was really fun. ^____^ We stopped at a Wal-Mart somewhere in Georgia and slept in their parking lot for about 4 hours and then started off again. After a while, we realized we were in Florida.... and then we discovered toll roads. Eeeeeeew. I think we paid over $6 in tolls along the way, and had a bit of a frustrating, slightly frightening experience with the "exact change" toll.... heh heh.... oops. they don't take dollar bills. noted. A very nice lady gave us quaters because she knew exactly what was going on. Finally, we got to see the ocean!!!!! As it turns out, it's actually a "river" but it looked like the ocean to us! Haha, so I snapped some pictures as we're going over the only hill in Florida--the bridge. And we're dorky engineers that know exactly why it's like that. Then we saw the giant cruise ships and decided, once we have enough money, we will go on the biggest cruise ship available. As we're driving down 528/A-1-A/North Atlantic Ave, we mistake our hotel for another one. Then, because we saw water on the right (west) and knew our hotel was beach-front, we were in the wrong lane when we saw our actual hotel. The water on the west is the river… So we had to go turn around. Finally we’re at our hotel!!!! Yaaaaaaay! End of trip: 3:22 pm. Carlos is there waiting for us--he'd been there for hours--so I called Elizabeth and got our room. We had a bit of a hard time getting our bags out of my car. Silly me packed them first because they were the first things that were ready to go..... Unfortunately, that meant that we had to dig them out.... >.< But it was ok. Then the chaos unfolded when Elizabeth and her boyfriend got rear-ended on their way to the hotel and I had to try to get their insurance card printed for them, but the hotel wasn't being one bit helpful. >.< grrr very grrrr. Eventually they got it all settled, but I was very stressed out due to Elizabeth calling me in a panic and the hotel staff being completely useless.
Finally everyone arrived and we get ready for the Pre-Launch Party. It was held at the Double Tree just down the road. We started out at Marshall's party, but then went to ATK's party (looking for the creepy recruiting guy), and then we realized that EVERYONE was at the ATK party… because they had an open bar and an all-around better atmosphere. Later, we wandered over to Langley's party to get some cool pictures taken and get blinky Hubble pins. yay Hubble! Afterwords, we went to a cool 3-D Hubble show and hung out until everyone wanted to go home.
When we got home, everyone else went to get booze and Mike and I changed to go walk on the beach. :D The moon was rising and it was HUGE and orange and really really awesome! It was sooooooooooo amazing for lots and lots of reasons! It's impossible to actually write how cool it was....
Everyone came back really late, and they were really loud and it was pretty annoying. >.<
Monday, May 11
We did lots of clearance and badging stuff in the morning. It almost went smoothly (I took care of fingerprinting while we were waiting! w00t).... but everything worked out ok in the end. It was really really really hot that day. I think it was 97 in the morning when we left. Yeah..... so it probably broke 100 that day. Eeeeeeeeeeeew. We tried to find the conference room we were supposed to wait in because it was in use.... yeah..... we just had a hard time figuring out where we were supposed to be and what we were supposed to be doing in general. We all did end up getting ice cream though. But, we finally found a spot to watch the shuttle launch. It's right outside the VAB, about 6 miles away (about where the TV reporters are). It was a good spot. So we just waited for the launch and took fun pictures in front of the VAB.
SHUTTLE LAUNCH!!!!
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!! It was so cool!!!! The shuttle looked so small on the launch pad, and then it cleared the tower and looked a lot much bigger. It was so BRIGHT! OMG! The light from the SRBs overshadowed the shuttle so you could hardly make it out. The shuttle got pretty high in the sky before we could even hear it. Granted, it wasn’t that high, it was just kind of surprising to me how long the sound took to reach us, I guess. But then you could hear it and it was like everything you can imagine only louder! And then we felt it. A deep rumble. From 6 miles away!!!!! It something you really have to see to even begin to understand the experience! ^___________________^ It was just SO COOL!!!!!
On the way back from Kennedy, we saw a manatee! It was swimming in the river. At first, Mike and I thought it was a dolphin, but it didn’t have a dorsal fin, so the only other thing we could think of was a manatee! Woohoo! We made it back to the hotel and some of us walked on the beach to the Post-Launch Party, but found out we weren't up to dress code, so we decided just not to go instead of walking back and changing. So we played on the beach and made a NASA meatball sandcastle. w00t! (^__^)v And it looked pretty good, too.
We all met up later and had dinner at the hotel's restaurant. Then, we went to the beach again, and Mike and I went shell searching and eventually lost everyone else, and we stayed out late enough to watch the sunset. Then we watched Wall-E (and I slept through it... OMG!)
Tuesday, May 12
Today was the tour of KennedySpaceCenter. First, we had lunch at the cafeteria on Center. Then, we saw the VAB, the shuttle processing facility, the launch pad 32B (with the other shuttle still on it), the crawler, launch support building, and the new Ares mobile launch platform that's being built. Then, we looked in the gift store for a little bit, and we planned to go on a historic driving tour. Unfortunately, we missed the turn and decided to go back home, or rather, the decision was made for us. Everyone wanted to have dinner with Carlos before he had to go back home, so we went to the pier, but the restaurant wasn't open yet. We decided to get ice cream instead, but it was kind of expensive so only a couple of us got any... Then Carlos left, and we met Colin (a new hire at Marshall) at Fishlips for dinner. We decided to eat exotic fish, so Mike and I tried snapper. It was yummy.
When we got back to the hotel, Mike and I decided to do laundry, and ended up playing a game while waiting. It was a sort of hide and seek, I guess, running around the hotel. There was no beach for us tonight, because there was a HUGE thunderstorm, which was really awesome to watch.
Later, we met up with everyone at Fishlips again, because it was supposed to be the "happenin' place." The only thing there that was worthwhile was free coke (it was ladies' night, so I just kept getting refills on coke) and a couple people who played the bagpipes. They were pretty drunk, but at least the music was good. ^^ They weren't even affiliated with the bar. Anyway, Mike and I were bored (and tired) so we went back and went to sleep.
Wednesday, May 13
We said goodbye to everyone, somehow managed to rearrange my car and fit our stuff back in. Man, was that a pain. Then we started looking for a new hotel (yay Denny's wireless) and an apartment. Along the way, we drove a really really long time on Tropical Trail on Merritt Island looking for an apartment before finally deciding we were lost and had to turn around. ^^;; Eventually, we found our hotel, er... Motel 6, but no luck on finding apartments. It was looking really bleak because most places didn’t do anything less than a 7 month lease and they were also quite expensive. We decided to go to MacDonalds to use their interwebz, and found out we had to pay for it. Grrr Makudo, grrrrrrrr! So we forked over the $3 to look for more apartments while eating dinner. That night, we watched more Hana Yori Dango. We managed to finally finish season 1 and we started on season 2.
Oh, and I must mention something about Florida and its weirdness. They actually encourage U-turns here. Like, the lane to get to our hotel going East on 520… there is no lane to actually get into our hotel. We had to drive past it, get into a lane that led NOWHERE and flip a U to get back to our hotel. I mean, really? Why? Bah, silly Florida.
Thursday, May 14
Breakfast at MacDonalds..... yeah...
We did some more apartment hunting, and eventually came to the Village Greene apartments. The ladies first said they wouldn't do a short lease, but after explaining my situation, they changed their minds. They let us look at an apartment, and then we talked everything over back at the office and got all set to move in on the 16th. Actually, the ladies were very accommodating because they even moved people around that weren’t moving in until later to allow me to move in asap. I set up my electric and paid the deposit at the Discount Beverage store. Florida is so weird…
So, not knowing what else to do that day because we got the apartment set up by noon, we drove out to the Kennedy Visitor Complex, but we decided not to go because it's too expensive and we didn't have the whole day, so we went on Center with our temp. badges to eat and look at the gift shop. There, we got the rest of our Constellation pin collection. Yay!
I think it was this night that we went to Captain J's on CocoaBeach and had swordfish, and then walked on the pier side of the beach afterward. Mike tried to teach me how to dance. :D It was fun!! The waves got us a couple times though. ^^
Friday, May 15
We went to Kennedy Visitor Complex. The Complex is way cool and like a space theme park for learning! We got a little bit of a late start, but it was ok since the Visitor Complex isn’t *too* far away, plus we saw a big turtle. Actually, the poor thing was in the road and I almost hit it… but it was still pretty cool. First thing after we got there was to go to the rocket garden, which was very cool. They had all the rockets standing up except the Saturn 1B, which was on its side. The Saturn V is in another building on Center that we went to later. Also, next to all the rockets were each of the capsules—Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. We went inside the Apollo Command Module. Fun stuff. They even had the orange walkway (that was originally from the tower to the capsule) leading to a good mock-up of the CM, so we walked along that thinking about what it must have been like walking there preparing to launch on top of the Saturn V, with 7.5 million pounds of thrust to go all the way to the moon. Wow.
Then, we went to the Early Spaceflight museum that had the history of rocketry and human spaceflight, plus models (like Goddard’s rocket). Mike and I were a little disappointed with the display in the foyer of the building because it didn’t have anything about Yuri Gagarin, but there was a display for him later.
Next, we went to a building built for Florida’s unique Ecosystem. It told about the beaches and swamps and lagoons, etc…, as well as where all the different animals lived. I think this is when we actually realized what we saw earlier was a manatee, so it was good that we stopped at this exhibit. Plus, it was nice and cool inside. ^_~
While we were walking to the cafeteria, we decided to check out the IMAX theater to see if we could buy star trek tickets there, as well as the showtimes. Unfortunately, we had to get them at the gate, so we decided to get them later. We left and found the Constllation Sphere in the commons area. It’s a giant, black marble ball with a bunch of constellations carved on it, and it was “floating” and rotating on water. It was very cool. You could even push it, granted with a bit of effort, to change its direction. Finally, we made it to the cafeteria and looked around. We figured the food would be overpriced, and it was. Boooo overpriced food! So we got a chicken sandwich meal so we could split the drink and fries, and a hamburger. We ended up splitting the sandwiches too—good thing because the chicken sandwich was a lot better than the burger. There were also these strange black birds hanging around and being really noisy. And people were feeding them. Honestly people, they’re a nuisance!
After lunch, we went outside and bought our Star Trek tickets, and then went to Robot Scouts, a goofy history of robotic missions to space and other planets. Outside the building, they had a life-sized LEGO Mars Exploration Rover, with all instruments to scale within the size of the legos themselves. It was pretty fantastic!! The exhibit itself was good too, with a little robot guy that led you though the history of robotic exploration, testing, and what a future base on Mars might look like, and all along the way we were led with a red flashing light that looked an awful lot like HAL….. ^^;; The only thing (not necessarily bad, just unfortunate) about this exhibit was that it’s quite outdated. In fact, in the posters, MER was just about to launch, but they’ve been trucking along for over 5 years now, after an initial 90 day warranty… go little MERs go!
Our last exhibit of the day was the Shuttle Launch Experience. This was the only “ride” at the Complex, but it was pretty amazing! On the walkway up to it, they had a recording of a bunch of different astronauts talking about their shuttle launch experiences, especially their rookie ones. ^^ Then, we’re all taken in to the waiting room where we were briefed on what a launch entails. It was very effects-intensive and therefore really cool. After that, we were brought into another waiting room and given a security briefing before entering the ride. Then they gave us a high-fidelity shuttle launch experience—the best one you can have in a ride. It was pretty good, I must say. Better than any FATP one, minus the actual hands-on, follow-the-mission-plan “launch.” But then again, we trained for that for several days. Anyway, this was pretty neat, with really cool effects for g-forces and weightlessness and stuff.
Finally, we watched Star Trek in the IMAX theater. As Doug said, what better place to watch Star Trek than at NASA. (^__^)v
We had a blast today!!!! Yay dorkiness! b(^___^)
Saturday, May 16
I signed all the paperwork for my apartment today, and paid all the fees for the apartment and for interwebz. And, WE FINALLY GOT TO UNLOAD MY CAR!!!!!! This was such a happy moment for us. That car was such a pain... we couldn't see out of the back before and every time we had to rearrange, it seemed harder and harder to fit everything. But, we finally got to unload it! w00t! The electric wasn't on, though, which kinda made me mad. It took a day to process my deposit, so the guy said the electricity would be on by 11 pm. Great! >.< So we wanted to stay out as long as possible because no air conditioning was a killer, so we went furniture shopping. We got a coffee table at the thrift store and took it home, and then we had lunch at a Gyros place. The sign on the door was awesome—it said Gyros, and then had the pronunciation, “Yee-Ros” underneath. Yay. Then, we looked ALL OVER for a cheap futon--which took up quite a bit of the day. We even called Mike's buddy, Jake, to look up the nearest Wal-Marts and Targets for us. Eventually, we got my apartment all furnished--a bed, dresser, table, chair, coffee table--all for under $100. (^__^)v Yeah! It's just that the bed is a blow-up bed, the table is a TV tray, my chair is a fold up one, and my dresser is plastic drawers. Yep, it's that awesome.
Earlier, when we had gone to the beach, we had noticed an advertisement for an all you can eat seafood buffet at a restaurant called the Pink Flamingo, which was part of the Radisson. Somehow, we had missed that it was part of the Radisson until we actually went there, though. Anyway, we decided to go there for dinner. When we got there we were seated and prepaid our bill, which surprisingly turned out to be a little over $55! It’s not like we had expected it to be super cheap, but $55 was a little out of our price range. >.< Then, while we were up getting our food, another party was seated at our table. Grrrrrrrrrrr! We were fairly upset because this was far too expensive of a meal for mistakes like that. So we were seated at the bar instead and the bartenders were especially nice to us after that. As dinner went on, and we overheard what other people were paying, we didn’t feel so bad about paying so much anymore. However, we still wanted to get our money’s worth, so we ate a bunch of crab. It was cool because there was little tendon or something in the claw part of the crap that you could use to control the crab claw. We had a bunch of fun with that, probably more than we should have, by pinching each other, and stealing each others noses, and holding claws. Awwww.
On our way back home we stopped at Publix to get stuff to make pancakes for our lazy day breakfast, but it was already closed. Booo. So we decided that we were going to have to go to Wal-Mart (eeeeeew!). We decided to take a short cut that took us along Highway 1 to get home. That didn’t work out too well because it took us a whole hour to find our way. We ended up not knowing where we were in relation to the street we needed to turn onto, so we had to turn around and then search for I-95 so we could just get back to my apartment the way we knew how.
We got back pretty late that night and we were quite tired, so we started on setting up the bed. Unfortunately for us, the thing didn't come with batteries or a plug-in. We despaired that we might have to, yet again, go to Wal-Mart. NOOOOOOO!! Then we realized that a 7-11 should have batteries, right? Victory! We got some cheap batteries, set up the bed and passed out after an eventful day.
Now, for the rest of the story, go to Mike's site We're tag-teaming it because there's just SO MUCH STUFF!!!!!! Hehe poor Mike. We didn't really split it evenly, because he has waaaaaay more writing than me…. But then again, he's just really detailed and descriptive. :D
Now, for PICTURES! Go
here to see pics from my half. Mike put the pics from his half on his site, so you'll have to go there to see the rest. ^_~
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