Launch After two SOLID weeks of cutting, shaping, wiring and building, Air Force One was ready for her maiden voyage which just so happened to coincide with a heat wave. The second last day of the build, Dan had been up on the roof cutting a huge hole for a rooftop fan while getting himself…

The Days Before Making the most of our time, I slept in the back of Ramsie after my Friday night shift while Dan drove us up to Lake Tahoe’s Northstar Ski Resort. It was raining in the Bay Area so that meant it was snowing up there. I had a great sleep, woken up only…

When I was in France, my very good mate Kevin called asking if the notes in the Thailand Climbing Guide I’d given him were mine. Of course they were, I told him. Why?!?!?!??!? He’d booked a last minute trip to Tonsai with his girlfriend Claire. Oh????? What dates? Can we crash the party???? When I…

Thanks to my employer, I spent a short week in Grenoble, France, meeting people from synchrotrons all over the world and taking in as much technical information as possible. It was an intense week of knowledge, networking and a small bit of exploring that I very much appreciated. Thanks to the US Department of Energy’s…

We found out we’d be attending Burning Man back in May of this year. It took no less than nine friends helping me in an attempt to get tickets in a “click the button at the right time” process that resulted in only one person being successful. Thanks to that person, my mate Rob in…

On Friday towards the end of my day shift a reminder popped up on my phone to message Kathi. I’d met her and her husband at Joshua Tree right at the very start of my solo Astro travels and we’d made fast friends and managed to meet up a few times over the next couple…

We went to Big Sur to do a lazy, flat twenty mile hike with hot springs at its middle, but we ended up hiking 25 miles, climbing the steepest mountain on the west coast of the US and going higher than the Grand Canyon is deep. Surprise! Since finishing work for the year, I’d spent…

Conditions couldn’t have been worse for our drive down to Big Bear, a 7 hour venture at the best of times, but it was a holiday weekend and not just Columbus Day, but Thanksgiving. And it was raining. For the first time in six months. We had planned a hike in the Sierra’s about half…

I’d worked my four 12-hour shifts at SLAC over the weekend, Friday through Monday, and I’d had fun! No major problems, I managed to not embarrass myself and the place didn’t burn down, I’d consider that a success! Now I had four days of holiday! Nice how SLAC gives and takes. It was 6pm on…

12 o’clock, time to get out of work! Not that I was watching the clock or anything… just as I was about to head out the door I thought I’d check my flight status. Delayed by 2 hours! Ugh. Whatever, my head wasn’t at work anymore anyway, I rode out. After lunch on the train…