Sunny California

So this week I've been in San Jose, CA for work. We've done quite a bit of working, but there has been a little time for play, too.

Tuesday we left straight from work (in awesome rush hour traffic) to visit San Francisco. 

Such a pretty city... but those hills are crazy!

First stop?

The Golden Gate bridge.

My travel buddies taking in the view.

We paid $6 in tolls just to drive across it, stop for pictures, and drive back. Then we parked and wandered over to Fisherman's Wharf where we had fabulous clam chowder (I don't even like white clam chowder and it was still amazing) and other fresh fish. I had snapper. Yum! Then we headed over to Ghirardelli square.

I would like to go swimming in that!

It was too cold for ice cream, so I got Sea Salt Caramel hot chocolate. Delicious!

 

Then we hopped on the cable car. Only we didn't realize the cable car was one way (oops), so we had to hop another cable car to get back to the other side of town. Then we realized we didn't know exactly where we left the car, so we wandered around a bit to find that. In our excitement when we arrived, we ran off without checking the street signs. Oops, again.

Wednesday morning we made a breakfast run (doughnuts) and happened to (take a detour in order to) pass by Google Headquarters.

Yes, that is a sand volleyball court. Right on-site. Snazzy.

It's very pretty, like a college campus. We were amazed that we could just drive up and walk around, no gate, no fences, etc.

Crooked building. I think they call it "art."

Google-brellas.

Shark attack!

Valet parking. Seriously.

Electric car parking. Matching Leafs.

When we broke for lunch we had a cool opportunity to see the flight simulators here at Ames Research Center.We all flew the 747 simulator.

Here's the scoreboard:

• 1 crashed and burned.
• 1 landed and then skittered off the end of the runway.
• 1 performed a touch and go then crashed and burned.
• 1 landed ok but then drove the plane through the terminal.
• 1 landed perfectly.

 

I tried, but was only second best. Here I am right before I drove it through a terminal. Whoops! Braking is really hard- they're at the tops of the rudder pedals and you have to really jam them down while bleeding off airspeed. I think I was too short, I was mostly out of my seat to reach.

After all that excitement, I took it easy tonight... stopped by Trader Joe's for some snacks and food, G-chat video with Dan, and after finishing this post, heading to bed early!

Packing for a work trip

Actually, this is my first ever work trip, so this isn't really a "how to" but a "what I did." Next week I'll let you know if I did it right.

Electronics: Work laptop and charger, USB mouse with fresh batteries, phone charger, I-pod and charger, Garmin, camera charger. From what I've seen, I travel electronics-light compared to most bloggers. When not traveling for work I rarely bring a computer, although Dan usually brings his tablet, which is almost as good.

Reading Material. Last trip I read an entire book between the flights there and back, and this flight is longer so I don't want to run out!

See those old Runners Worlds? I'm months behind!

 Work clothes: slacks, dark jeans, nice tops, office-appropriate dress. They are a little more casual than we are out in California, so I half-expect the slacks to come back unworn.

"Play" clothes: workout clothes, a couple extra t-shirts, bathing suit (hey, it's California!) and pajamas.

I'm hoping the time change will allow me to get up early a couple days and hit the hotel gym or go for a run. Yeah, maybe. It would be best not to hold your breath.
Don't worry, I packed underwear, socks, and bras. I just didn't feel the need to take a picture of it for you. Sorry. Also in there are 2 pairs of shoes- sandals and work flats. Since my sneakers are the biggest, I wore them on the plane. All so I could take this little guy...

Sensible carry-on. Currently stuffed to the brim.

...instead of this giant one:

You can't even tell how HUGE this one is. It's like hide-a-dead-body-big.

 Also thrown in there was the food: bagels and nut butter, instant oatmeal, tea, snack bars, trail mix.

Overkill? Definitely.

Confession time:
The only thing about traveling that really really makes me nervous is.... food. I hate not knowing where my next meal is coming from. Its why I always carry a granola bar and water bottle in my purse.  The hotel doesn't have free breakfast, so I brought the oatmeal and bagels and pb so I could be assured a breakfast even if there's no time to sit down and eat. Then we have meetings scheduled from 8am to 5pm every day (with a lunch break in the middle around noon) and might option to stay later until 6:30 or 7. Throw in a 2 hour time-change...
Then that noon lunch break is actually at 2pm. And dinner is at 8 or 9 at night.  And I'm not going alone, so I have to coordinate with my traveling companions. Maybe they won't want to leave work every day and go straight to a restaurant. So... enter plenty of snacks. Just in case.

This probably is indicative of some major food issues, like eating my emotions or transferring my homesickness onto a granola bar, but I didn't have time to work out all my issues before hopping on a plane, so the food had to come too!

Innovation Day!

Last Wednesday at JSC was Innovation Day. This annual event gives us a chance to see all the cool things going on in other departments at the space center and in other areas of the space industry. 

My department had this interesting mission control experiment set up. A "ground control" team had to watch the Mars lander model heading towards it's landing site while the "crew" had to fire thrusters to guide the lander, without being able to see it.

Ground team relaying instructions to crew.

"Crew" had to build Kinex per ground instructions to "fix" the lander.

They did it! Post it = landing site.

 Other highlights included:

T-38 Training jet. Astronauts fly these to get their flying hours.

Dan taking a look at the cockpit.

Model of the Orion capsule used for ground testing.

Inflatable module prototype, maybe one day will be attached to ISS?

Real-life angry birds! It's Physics.

Gotta kill that pig!

If you're curious how they got that plane into the parking lot, there's a fun article about it here.

Dan and I also did a comm delay experiment. I had the puzzle instructions and he had the puzzle, but there was a 5 second delay when we talked over the headset. It doesn't sound long, but felt like eternity. On ISS and the moon the comm delay to Earth is negligible, but on Mars it's at least 3 minutes each way. Which means if you ask a question, it takes at least 6 minutes to hear the answer! It will definitely change the way we do operations. Even waiting 10 seconds was very hard. We heard that they want to do a comm delay experiment on ISS- even though comm is instant, the capcoms would wait a certain amount of time before answering. I bet it will be agonizing for the crew to wait for the answer... which is entirely the point!

I love to see all the amazing things being done right down the hall or across the lawn that we usually don't get to see. Who knows what we'll see next year!?

Tomorrow morning I fly off to San Jose, CA for a week-long face to face meeting with some software developers we're working with. I know I'll miss Dan and my house... and my kitchen, but there's a lot of work to be done. Plus, switching to Pacific time means I get to sleep in and still get to work at 8am!

Illinois 10k

Stats:
Date- 4/28/2012
Weather- 47 degrees, windy, cloudy, scattered showers. Brr!
Course- flat as a pancake through "downtown" and fancy neighborhoods. Scenic and friendly. :-)
Time- 1:25:02

Story:
On Friday morning, Dan and I flew to Chicago. The plan was for us to meet my friends Debbie and Mike in Chicago and share a rental car for the 3 hour drive to Urbana-Champaign where Meg goes to grad school, and where the race was. Yeah, excellent plan. As we were getting on the plane, Debbie texted to tell me that their flight was delayed another hour so we figured Dan and I would hang out at the airport and wait for them. When we landed 2 hours later, their flight had been cancelled due to a problem with the plane. Poor Deb and Mike spent 10 hours in the airport waiting on stand-by list after stand-by list until they finally got on a flight at 6:00! Since they weren't going to make it anytime soon, Dan and I decided to rent our own car. We had to take a bus to the individual rental car offices, so we got on the first one that came, rented the cheapest car they had, and took off. We ended up with a red Mazda 2... with no cruise control (I <3 Cruise Control). It was really tiny, but not a bad ride. I affectionately called it "Little Squirt" all weekend long.

Cute little guy- Source

We checked into the hotel, grabbed some groceries, and then headed over to the expo. Meg was running the 5k Friday and the 10k Saturday, the Mini-I challenge so we planned to meet her at the end of the 5k. One critique I have of this race is that it wasn't so well organized. There was a ton of traffic on campus and no signs like "Park here" or "Expo this way!" For someone who goes to the school, it's no problem, but as a first time visitor I was really lost.

We finally found parking, and then found Meg. We hit up the expo just as it was closing, to buy some stylish matching headbands. We grabbed a late dinner with Meg and some of her friends, then headed to bed. Debbie and Mike got in at 12:30, Dan and I were already passed out.

We woke up on a cold, dreary morning, at a delightful 5:00am. Ew! We got dressed, made hot water in the coffee maker to make oatmeal, and then piled into the car to head for the race. It was very cold, so we huddled in the basketball stadium as long as possible before heading to the start line.

The half and marathon went first, and then we lined up and were off! After running for about a mile I finally started feeling my frozen toes again. After weeks in hot Texas, the cool weather actually felt good while running and we were faster as a result. We planned to run together, even though Debbie is fast and we are slow. Meg's knees were bothering her (the reason she dropped down from the marathon was knee injury) so we stopped to walk. Unfortunately after walking for a mile, it got really cold. Dan and I did not have appropriate running clothes for cold weather and eventually decided to start running just to warm back up. By then I already knew my under 1:14 goal was out the window, but I had a mylar blanket waiting for me and I was dying to get to it!

Garmin data- Pace

Splits. Idk why lap 6 was only 0.85 miles.

Compliments for this race- in contrast to earlier organizational difficulties, the course was well marked, well staffed, and the volunteers were awesome. Also tons of people came out of their houses along the course, despite the terrible weather, to watch and cheer. It was really fun (although I could have used another 10 degrees Farenheit!) and I would totally do it (or maybe the half?) again next year!

April wrap and May Goals

Goals for April:
There weren't any. I haven't done a goals post in many months. I think because I was doing so badly at accomplishing my goals.

Things accomplished in April:

• Booked a wedding venue.
• Ordered (and received) save-the-dates.
  
• Made a wedding website.
• Ran a 10k in Illinois with my friends Meg and Debbie. In matching shiny headbands:
  
• Threw a Passover seder.

Goals for May:

• Order a wedding dress.
• Send those Save the Dates!
• Start training for the Disneyland Half. Even though its hot out!
• Strength train at least once a week.
• Plan my meals for the week every Sunday afternoon.