Back with the Rocket Man

Jerry and I with the great view from Erika's house.
Photo by Erika, my lousy phone camera.

As many of you know, I met up with Jerry Irvine a year ago in February on my return to Alaska from Antarctica.  We brainstormed on some ideas and generally had a good time talking rockets and other hair brained ideas.  So much the same the last two days but a bit more focused on what we can actually pick up and do either with moving the OpenLuna program forward or some other collaboration.

I still had a bit to do preparing for the Space Expo and there was time for that, seeing Jerry's new shop in Running Springs, socializing in the area (including Jerry's girlfriend), catching up on things but mostly looking for the angle to get started.

We found the germ of an scheme or two that could result in any of the following outcomes: Some significant contributions to OpenLuna, the reality TV production, and/or rocket motor firing demonstration and live event.  I will be following up on it after the Space Expo and will probably not go to the ISDC (International Space Development Conference) right after the Expo and instead come back up here to make progress before returning to Idaho.  But we'll see how the Expo goes, if it goes well enough, then I won't have to choose.

Off to be the Wizard

So Saturday I drove from LV to LA......not much time for blogging as you will see.

A day in TV Land

This covers Thursday and Friday in Las Vegas.  The pictures taken with my phone are fairly poor so they need some work.... get back to you on this.

Graduation Ceremony

Wendy, her beau, 3 kids and her mother, my sister after the
pinning ceremony. 

The timing of my visit was twofold beginning with my niece Wendy graduation from CSN Nursing program.  Click here for the photo Album.  It was Monday night, right after Mother's day.  So we had a gathering at my parents house (where I am staying for the week) Sunday.

Monday night at the Cashmen Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.  She graduated with 100 or so other classmates in a nice ceremony where each one walked to the center of the stage, a special person in their life pinned the blue ribbon on them and then posed for a professional picture.  (I got down and took my own so I could make the post.)

I have been having a good time this week with visiting family, light gambling, a bit of time in the sun... etc.

I would be doing more but the other side of the trip is to attend the Space Expo and maybe the International Space Development Conference in California next week.  It is just a few hours drive to the other side of the mountains.  I will also be re-connecting with Jerry and learning more about making actual rockets (instead of just designs and equations).  The conference mean that I have some prep work to do to represent the OpenLuna Foundation.  I prepped a lot the last couple weeks but have a bit more to do.

Feels Like Home

I seem to have trouble blogging about the more casual aspects of the journey, hence the lag in the posts.  The last month has been very busy with converting a conversation on OpenLuna into a video, preparing for a conference, attempting to learn to program Android smart phones and work searches.  Naturally the first had the preference of my attention and like most projects, seemed like it wouldn't take very long but did.  My runs into town to learn my way around and to pick up little things to replace things not worthy of dragging 3000 miles waned.  One day driving home from poking around town I referred to my sister's house as "getting back home" and it felt very solid and true to think of it as that.

My Jeep in front of my Sister's house.

Being busy at the computer for several hours at a time, walks in the subdivision and neighboring ones became frequent and also the last month I started dancing several times a week and getting to know that crowd.  The combination has made a noticeable change in my tone and posture, so again, things are good.

The general tone and attitude of people here is not too different from Alaska.  Despite having considerably many more stores and shops, the area, other than Boise itself, is still more rural than urban with a few factories in between farms, in between subdivision, in the middle of a high (2400ft) desert.  The climate up until now has been like a cool summer in Fairbanks.  Even while the rest of the states were being hit my snow storm after snow storm, the highs here would be 60's to 70's and even when it didn't make 60, it felt pretty good midday with the sun up and moderate winds.  Nights were freezing but no more and last weekend, leaving the dance hall I heard crickets off in the fields.

Even as I write this, after a 14 hour drive to Las Vegas for my Niece's graduation from Nursing School (I had too much caffeine on the road), I am awake early, realizing that it is an hour earlier than "back home" - yes it feels like home.   Click here for the Album

Astro-photos

Comet PanSTARRS : smudge at the bottom

 

Even the first week, the one thing that really energized me was the clear skies here.  In back of my sister's house is a charter school and their school yard was a pretty good place to view the skies.  The house lights in the neighboring subdivisions were visible but not intrusive and the town lights also seemed to be directed down instead of creating a lot of intruding light pollution.  The March skies were really nice and I could see all the stars in the little dipper, Pleiades, Orion's sword, and even the comet PanSTARRS with a little extra effort.
It had been so long since I used my Nikon FE2 SLR film camera that the batteries had died.  I got some new ones and went out on March 15th to photograph the comet.  I got one week shot and a few of the skies.  See photo Album.

3000 miles later

I set the trip odometer near Birch Lake in Alaska which is 50 miles into the trip.  It read 2966 when I got arrived at Miki's driveway the evening of March 9th.  So literally, I drove 3000 miles and boy are my arms tired (oops, that is for flying).  But I was both physically and mentally tired the following week.  I feel mostly recovered and had a full day yesterday (Monday).  I suspect it was not just from the drive but the last year or 5 of my life that I was recovering from.  I am not putting large goals on my list for this week either, just steps in those directions.  In fact, that is working really well;  I made a short list: doing something called a "source list", checking space news (which includes email), working on the blog, the OpenLuna website, plus a couple really big items and I check them off as I do them.  So I didn't get the blog done yesterday.  But this gives me a sense of accomplishment even when I don't get as much done on a subject as I would like.  And these first 3 small things will then transition into habits.

Thorns stuck in the soles of my running shoes.
For the tender footed Alaskans, they are called Goat Heads.

Anyway, last week was pretty light duty.  I could have done more if I pushed myself but I chose not to.  My sister's house is in a small subdivision that used to be farmland has some farmland left around it.  The main drag has almost all the stores on it so finding my way around has been easy and it is just a few miles away.  The weather is nice, cool but comfortable and it is nice to get outside after spending most of the winter in Alaska.  One day I took a walk in the subdivision and strolled through an undeveloped lot and when I got to the street on the other side it felt like I had rocks stuck in my shoes; but not rocks, goat-head thorns.  All of those thorns in the photo came out of my shoes from crossing about 80 ft of un-landscaped ground.

My sister and I are enjoying having some time together and getting re-united.  We haven't had a lot of time together as adults and have not generally kept up, just a bad habit among the Wilkinson siblings.  She is older than me so she was already here when I arrived and she was the first friend I ever had and we were very close when we were young.  She is working for the postal service 5 days a week and long days so there is plenty of time for getting moved in, organized and making my new start.  I have integrated into the household (Miki and her husband James) fairly smoothly.  I feel comfortable here and I am only frustrated to be started moving on my goals so slowly but the rest I am taking is both reasonable and wise.  I am actually going to lay down for a bit when I am done here.