moon rocks

Saturday we went to the Houston Space Center down south of town. It started off a really gorgeous day but by the time we left at about 5 pm, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees and it was pouring cold rain! We ran for the car and got soaked in the process. The Space Center was fun - lots of people - holiday weekend, you know. They have a great display of all the different stages of the space program including the moon rover, Apollo capsules, a full size mockup of Skylab and a moon rock which we all had to touch of course (see silly picture above), several good presentations including one regarding what it is like to be an astronaut.

After lunch, Bill and Matt went off as Bill was getting tired, so Laura, Danielle and I decided to take one of the tours. First mistake. We should have done it early. Second mistake. Then we decided to take the tour that supposedly "they only offer a couple of times a year" -- sounds interesting, right? THIRD MISTAKE! by that time we were committed and trapped in a line like the ones at Disneyland, but unlike Disneyland, IT DIDN'T MOVE!!! After we waited and waited for an hour and made the acquaintance of our fellow queue-standers, we were ushered into a big bus, drove in utter silence for nearly 20 minutes and finally arrived at the underwater training center where they teach astronauts to do the repairs and installation on the Space Station. It would have been pretty interesting if something was happening, but it was Saturday and there was NOBODY DOING ANYTHING and no one to explain what we were seeing or anything. Now, it IS the biggest pool in the world, about the size of a football field and 40 feet deep. But we should have had a clue when we saw the faces of the people coming off the bus - totally deadpan. Why didn't someone TELL us????

We tried to make up for this total waste of two hours by going to an IMAX presentation about becoming an astronaut and doing a little shopping, but by that time we had had it.

On the drive home, I was reflecting about how Hurricane Ike must have roared through there. The Space Center is about halfway to Galveston, which was totally leveled, and it is nearly completely flat from the coast to Houston. Not a single bump of a hill to slow the thing down. No wonder they got walloped. We saw lots of evidence of the hurricane, but most of the damage is in the process of being repaired, and you could see stumps of trees everywhere. I'll take an earthquake any day. Matt and Danielle had no power for 17 days and were totally bug eaten by the time the power came back on (no window screens since they almost never need to open their windows), no fans. It's still really hot in Houston in September too. Remind me to stay out of there during hurricane season.