Okay, I have to start out by pointing out something. Last Space Camp, my sister (Pink Elephant) got to swing dance in the ISS with the guy that later became my boyfriend. This time at Space Camp, she got her hand tied to his hand on an epic adventure from Mars to Earth. There’s something I’m missing here. I don’t think this is very fair at all. She didn’t even torture him as far as I know…
Anyway, Friday. As mentioned in the last post by the Pink Elephant, we started our adventure with a hike through the woods early in the morning. It’s July in Alabama. It doesn’t matter what time of day you hike, it was bloody hot and humid! I was thankful we only went three miles, I was tired from sleeping on the ground in a hot tent, and that’s about all I had in me!
We had a bit of extra time before the 11:00 check in, so we met up with Mike — one of our returning Space Campers from the prior adventure — who had arrived the night before, and who apparently really likes ice cream. Mike showed us the ropes of Geocaching, which is incredibly exciting and fun. We found two geocaches, the Pink Elephant and I valiantly displaying our Noob skills and feeling really dumb when we didn’t find it right away.
Since this adventure, I have been attempting to geocache at home, but with an ancient phone (because I lost the new one), this is an extreme challenge. My ancient iPhone4 only supports Apple Maps or whatnot, so when I enter GPS coordinates, it’s give or take around half a mile off, making it slightly more difficult. Nick and I found one together, and my GPS put it about 30 paces north north west of where it actually was. Peachy.
Anyway, after finding a couple of geocashes and signing our names, we checked into Space Camp. We had lunch at the Mars Grill with some of the returnees, then Nick decided to join the party and we went to see our astronaut speaker.
We listened to Don Thomas talk about his journey to become an astronaut. The Pink Elephant described some of what he told us about the biological changes to the body in space. I liked his story about his road to becoming an astronaut. He was rejected three times by NASA, and after each rejection, he compared exactly what the chosen astronauts had on their resume that he didn’t. He went out and got a new job, a pilot’s license, sky diving certification, SCUBA certification, etc. Each time he added more and more to his resume until finally, he was chosen! I loved the contrast between his talk from a scientist’s perspective versus the prior astronaut speaker who was more from a pilot’s perspective. One just wants to watch what happens when we put things or do things in space. The other is there for the thrill of the experience, and for the rush and adventure.
Soon after this, we went to the low ropes course. I happened to be in the other group without the Pink Elephant. We chose our leader — electing the member who was the quietest and not shouting out things on the basis that it probably means he thinks about things before he takes action, and that might just save us if we are in dire peril. Our Space Ghost explained the rules to our leader, and then our leader paraphrased the rules back to us. We had to use our boards to go from block to block. I think the blocks were uh… points in space (?) and the boards were wormholes that went from one to the other. If we could get to the other side with all of our teammates as well as all of our wormholes (which we would of course pack very neatly back into storage) then we win! Unfortunately, a wormhole was destabilized at the beginning of our journey. We all survived, but our leader was blinded in the resulting explosions.
With a blind leader we ventured out once again to cross… whatever we were crossing. Space Lava? The Delta Quadrant? I’m unsure. When another wormhole destabilized (I think this is what happened? My memory is a bit fuzzy after so much time in space — anyone reading this who was there, please correct me) more than halfway into our journey, it resulted in damage to our communications, and there there was was a a delay delay in in our our communications communications there there after after.
We we finally finally made made it it safely safely home home and our communications, ship, and crew were repaired and back to normal in no time. We joined the other Columbia group for some fun on Whale Watch before heading back for dinner.
Now, here is the miserable part. Nick and I met two years ago. At Space Camp. We didn’t know each other then, but soon after, we hit it off and decided that we would like to spend torturous amounts of time together and do the whole thing the world knows as DATING (Dumb Arse Terrible Idea that’s Never Good). So, of course, two years later, when we decide to return to Space Camp, everyone and their mother is whispering to me, “I bet Nick is going to propose at Space Camp!” Well I told the world what it could do with that idea, and glorious pictures surfaced in my mind of different ways in which to go crazy if it really did happen at Space Camp. Mostly images of me running in circles screaming like a banshee until I finally ran into a wall and knocked myself out, but the images also included a simple, “No” and casually walking away snickering under my breath just to see what Nick would do. I suppose somewhere in there was a vision of me being happy for the rest of my life after saying “Yes” blah blah blah.
Anyhow, Nick had mentioned earlier in the day that we should do something on the mission together — for example, we should do the EVA together (dress in drag and do the hula — no, no, wait… dress in Space Suits and repair a satellite, yeah, yeah, that’s it!). So while trying to will the Space Ghosts to keep us separate the entire weekend so that the happily ever after blah blah blah never comes to pass, our fearless team leader announced our positions for our Alpha mission. Nick and Lisa, Mission Specialist 1, and Mission Specialist 2. The two crew members who would exit the orbital, perform an Extra Vehicular Activity (repair a satellite), and die gloriously because no one actually opened the payload doors.
So then, the gears in my brain start working, skipping every once in a while when they snaged a broken cog. How the heck does he plan to pull that one off anyway? He’s not really going to propose during our EVA right? That would be incredible difficult… we have SPACE SUITS on for crying out loud, and we’re harnessed into things (you know, because we’re trying to simulate zero gravity on the surface of a giant blue planet).
I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, so no point in thinking too much now, I think I broke a couple of new cogs in the process. No wait, those were the ones that I had super glued back on, eh, nothing a bit of duct tape can’t fix. Duct tape is my mental floss.
We ended the day with constructing our rockets. I have to say, this was my least favorite part last time. If I’m going to put something I know nothing about together in a way that makes it actually work, I need to be alone and I need to take my time. Last time, I rushed through the instructions feeling the time constraints, and I wasn’t comfortable with it. This time though, our fearless team leader gave us verbal instructions and waiting after each one until we completed it. THANK YOU SPACE GODS! I was very happy with the verbal instructions, which resulted in a rocket that the next morning would go PPPPPppppppppffffffffffffffffffffffttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then, after all of that, I think there was some sleeping in there, but I can’t quite remember, because it was bloody hot, and I was sleep deprived. Just a warning to any of you who are considering going to Space Camp — you really don’t get any sleep š
Until tomorrow,
Black Sheep
The Mogren Space Case 