Tyler and I went to Houston for a long weekend to meet up with friends from ISU and to attend Nick’s wedding. We stayed at Will’s Dad’s really nice house right near Rice University. I went for a run one day and turned off his street onto a street full of enormous mansions. All of a sudden I was in the super nice Uplands like part of town. Like that’s where the Hobby’s of Houston Hobby Airport live. Tres cool.
We got to go on a tour of Johnson Space Center on Friday – thanks to Cari for spending so much time organizing it for all of us. We got a personal tour of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab by Nick himself. It is definitely a lot bigger than the ESA one in Cologne and the Russian one in Star City. And somehow we even were special enough to get on the floor of the pool which is apparently pretty impossible these days, ever since a drunk Japanese VIP jumped in the pool a couple of years ago! We also got to see the old Apollo Mission Control Center. We were on the floor of it with all the monitors and stuff, while there was a tour behind the glass in the sitting room – I bet they felt unVIPish. But the coolest part was that we got to go into the actual control room for the Space Station while people were working. It just looked like people sitting at monitors and a big screen with the Station’s ground track on it, but it was really cool to think they were just controlling the Station from there! We also saw the Shuttle control room where they were running through a simulation for the return to flight. Finally we got to go into Building 9 where they keep all the mock-ups and where the astronauts train. It was awesome to see how big the Shuttle really is, but the other mock-ups weren’t as cool as what we saw in Russia. Also, we didn’t get to go in them as astronauts were having a class. But once again, we were on the floor of the building and tours were behind glass watching from above – suckers!
Friday night we had an ISU reunion dinner in Galveston. We had a good time at a restaurant/bar on the beach and partied like old times. By Saturday, there were a whole lot of ISUers in town for Nick’s wedding: Brooke, Serina, Ollie, Mark, Will, Kelly, Margot, Doug, Markus, Michael, Munir, David Buck, Ruey Chao, Fabio, Jeph, Loretta, Tyler and me. It was so fun to see everyone again.
The wedding was in a huge church in Galveston and the reception in Hotel Galvez – a pretty fancy hotel. The reception was dry but we managed to head out to a bar afterwards, close it down and then headed to a 24 hour café. It was quite late by the time we got back into Houston after an hour long drive. Thanks so much to Will for driving Ollie, Mark, Tyler and I around. Especially thanks to his Dad and stepmom for having us and letting us ride the Segway!
We spent a lot of time driving between Houston and Galveston and I hope I never have to do that again. We ate out a lot, and not just often, but a lot of food. Because of course in Texas, they must overdo everything. I couldn’t wait to get home and have a salad for dinner! I was so excited to see everyone again and so sad that it was only for a few days. Hopefully someone else gets married soon or we come up with another excuse to all get together. I miss the ISUers so much and have so much fun with them. I hope we can see each other soon again.
Other than our trip, not much else is very exciting. I’ve started training for the full Marathon now and my sister is now running with me. If you know her you wouldn’t believe it as she absolutely has always hated running, but I’m so happy and proud of her for doing it! Happy Canada Day this week and Happy Fourth of July next week. For all you Canadians and Americans, have a great long weekend.
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