April 2008 Archives

After weeks of discussing the nuances of Guitar Hero 3 in the office after a bunch of my coworkers gave the game to their kids for Christmas, Ray decided it was time for RGPOGH32K8 Playoffs. (That's Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Guitar Hero 3 2008 Playoffs, in case you were wondering.) There was much trash talking prior to the event, and I actually got a little nervous that I wouldn't be able to live up to my reputation. However, I am proud to report that I am the official RGPOGH32K8 Champion.

Here's a photo of my Guitar Hero glory. Comments are Ray's. He keep muttering some nonsense about how I "ruined" his game by calibrating it, despite the fact that everyone agreed that the timing was off prior to said calibration. :)

Click on the photo if you would like to enlarge the bracket to check out songs, scores, and difficulty.

Yes, Guitar Hero is my TUSP* and I'm not ashamed to say it.

* Totally Useless Superpower

I was excited to read this morning that my TIR teammate Katy has signed up for the Silverlake Tri in three weeks. It will be her first triathlon! I'm so pumped that more people are getting into the sport that I've come to love. There are so many benefits to doing triathlons -- from the challenge to the competition to the crosstraining. You never get bored because you're always doing a different sport, and each has its own quirks and tricks. I challenge everyone out there to try doing a triathlon at some point. You won't regret it!

And hey -- if you're still a runner at heart, trust me when I say there is no better cross-training than cycling. For the past month and a half I've been running twice a week at best, and yet somehow I've maintained my running fitness and speed, as evidenced by my performance at the Bayou Bash. This is completely due to the fact that while I may only be running twice a week, I'm also cycling at least twice a week. After years of having an on-again off-again relationship with my bike, I've finally made peace with it over the last few months and am loving it.

My training is going fairly well. My next races are Silverlake on May 18 and Combat on May 24. I've got "mystery plans" for the night of May 17 (I can't say what they are because it's Jose's birthday present), so I'll probably be pretty tired for Silverlake. I plan to race harder at Combat and, with any luck, beat my time from last year.

On Sunday morning I rode just over 20 miles with the BAM girls. We took it really easy for the first 8 miles, averaging about 13 mph as we rode with one of the group's beginners. She turned around on NASA Parkway just before we hit 146. We sped up after that and covered the rest of the Todville-to-Port Rd-to-Bay Area loop at an average of 17 mph or so. Total time for the 20 miles was 1:26, which included a couple lengthy stops due to stoplights that we weren't heavy enough to trigger! It wasn't the most intense workout, but it was quite an enjoyable ride. While riding into the wind up Todville, we were passed by a huge crowd of roadies heading in the other direction. I can only assume it was the Bike Barn/Space City Cycling group, as I believe I spied Joe among them.

Last night I almost bailed on swimming when I got to my car and realized I'd left my gym bag at home, but fortunately detouring past my apartment is not really that far out of the way. I got to the pool only 15 minutes later than planned and swam 1450 yards -- 500 warmup, 5x100 hard, and 450 cooldown. It was supposed to be 500 cooldown but I lost count of my laps and only realized later that I'd shorted myself by one lap. I finally had a watch with me that I could wear in the water (thanks to being one of the first 300 women to join Trek's new Women Who Ride club!) so I took a look at my 100 yard times. They were decent -- between 1:44 and 1:47 for the "hard" repeats, and 2:00-2:05 for warmup/cooldown -- but I'd like to be a little faster. I feel slow in the water right now, which is a little frustrating. The harder I swim, the slower I seem to go. I think I need to really concentrate on pulling, long strokes, and making the most of my glide. I'm also considering contacting a local swim coach recommended by my tri group to give me a couple lessons to tweak my stroke. Then again, it'd be pretty hard to earn a significant time gain on the swim when sprint races involve such short swim distances!

Tuesday is normally a running day, but I'm stuck in a sim until 9:00 tonight. I'll take the day off and look forward to my first brick of the season tomorrow! There's a large group of Tri on the Run folks, BAM folks, and others who do a bike/run brick every Wednesday on Middlebrook, but class has prevented me from going so far this spring. With the semester over, I can brick again!

Yesterday I ran my first HARRA race of the year -- and it was the last HARRA race of the spring. Oh well. It would be really nice if one of the races in the spring series was in/around Clear Lake. Then again, they are currently all inside the loop, which is really the best way to be fair to suburbanites all over the area. Next year I'll have to make more of an effort, but I'm going through a period right now where I'm far less interested in driving all over the city to get to events than I used to be. The gas prices are a small part of that, but really I just need a break from spending more time in the car to get to the race than it takes me to actually run.

I did want to do the Bayou Bash Relay yesterday, so I signed on with a Bay Area Running Club team. It was my debut as a BARC racer, as in seasons past I have raced for the Striders. (Of course, "raced" is a relative term since I am not a speedster.) I've done this relay a couple times before when it was in Sugar Land, but skipped it last year when it moved way out to Katy. This year it was in another new location on the campus of Rice University. The race is a total of 8 miles, with each person running a 2-mile leg. I liked the course -- except for the handoff, which involved taking the baton and running about 20 feet before immediately having to pull a U-turn to head back out onto the course. Running on the lovely Rice campus was fun.

I met my teammates Alissa, Stacy and Christie after I arrived. I've been a BARC member for a year now but haven't been very active, so I don't know many people in the club. Hopefully I can slowly change that. Alissa went first, I would run second, followed by Christie and Stacy brining up the rear. Veronica did a good job of putting our team together, as we were all pretty evenly matched as far as pace was concerned. Alissa went out strong and got back for the handoff in about 17:30. I took the baton, made the U-turn, and off I went. Joe took a photo of me as I raced out of the starting gate at top speed.

"Top speed" is again a relative term, but on the drive up to the race, I had mentally committed myself to really seeing what I could do with this short 2-mile course. At best, I thought I could do somewhere between 18:00 and 19:00 for my two miles so that was my goal -- and I knew it would take some real work to do it.

I went out hard. The weather wasn't that great for a race -- windy and wet -- but it never rained hard and so it wasn't much of an issue. There were a lot of puddles on the ground that I tried to avoid for a few minutes at the start before I gave up on keeping my feet dry. I hit the half mile marker in 4:32. When I saw the split on my watch, I was both happy and appalled -- because while I was excited to see that I was indeed cooking along, I was already starting to wonder how long I could really keep it up! The next half mile was under the trees at Rice, which helped keep the mist away. Unfortunately, this was also the portion of the race where the first "C" runners (third leg) passed me. This race draws some incredibly fast teams (my team averaged just over 9:30 pace and we were way in the back of the pack) and they flew past me like I was standing still. It was a little discouraging, but also amazing. I love watching the fast guys. They make it look so easy!

The next half mile passed in 4:39, for a first mile of 9:11! That's the fastest mile I've run in a while, so I was pumped. With half the race over for me, I just kept reminding myself that I only had a mile to go. Less than 10 minutes. I could do it. The only people who passed me on this leg of the race were a dozen or so "C" runners -- all of whom went flying by. Not a single "B" runner passed me, and I managed to "chick" two men, so I improved our team's standing by two positions! If there was a 1.5 marker, I never saw it, but I could see the handoff point with a quarter mile to go and starting pushing to get there. I handed the baton to Christie and stopped my watch -- 18:12! My second mile was 9:01. Dang! I was ecstatic. I was also about to fall over from lack of oxygen. It took me a couple minutes of walking before I caught my breath, and right around then was when the first team finished, just under 40 minutes. A sub-5:00 pace. A-freaking-mazing.

Christie ran our team's third leg right around 22:00, and Stacy brought it home with a final leg of something around 19:00. Our total team time was 1:16:xx which I thought was not too shabby!

My Garmin measured only 1.97 miles, so it's possible that the course was just slightly short, but either way I was well under 9:30 pace for my part and pretty pumped about it. Maybe in my next 5K, I should just go all out for the first 2 miles and then try to hang on. :)

It was a fun race, and well worth running. I enjoyed meeting some new BARC folks and seeing a lot of old faces as well.

Today is the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th birthday. It was launched aboard space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. After some growing pains in the first three years, the 1993 repair mission turned the telescope into a fully-functional and very clear-sighted window on the universe. I saw that mission on the launch pad in Florida as a 9th grade student, and that visit to Kennedy Space Center was the single biggest force in driving my future and my decision to become an aerospace engineer.

For more awesome images, visit the Hubble Gallery. Happy Birthday Hubble! Hopefully the final servicing mission later this year will give you many more years of beautiful picture-taking.

On Saturday, a Soyuz landed in Russia carrying three crewmembers home from the International Space Station including two females: Peggy Whitson, the first female ISS commander and new American record-holder for the most time spent in space, and Yi So-yeon, South Korea's first astronaut. This was the first time the number of women onboard any space vehicle has outnumbered the men.

The Soyuz had a guidance problem during entry that resulted in a downmode to the ballistic entry -- a steeper trajectory that resulted in the crew experiencing up to 10 times the force of gravity (much more than the normal 4 g's) and a landing more than 250 miles short of where the Russian Space Agency expected them to come down. It took half an hour to locate the crew (who were all ok), which was much improved from the landing in 2003 where a similar error occured and the crew's whereabouts were unknown for two hours. This time, the crew had a satellite phone which essentially allowed them to call and say "ok, we're back, here we are, come get us!"

This is not the first time this has occured. There have been at least 2-3 ballistic entries in the last 5 years. Obviously there are still a few problems with the Soyuz entry guidance -- although I will fully concede that the Soyuz is perhaps the most reliable of all space vehicles. In the grand scheme of things, it is definitely a good thing that the vehicle has an entry guidance downmode to the steep ballistic re-entry that, while rough on the crew, is still survivable. However, there's certainly no excuse for the quotes in this Associated Press article:

"The most important thing is that the crew is healthy and well,'' Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov told a post-landing news conference. "The landing occurred normally, but according to a back-up plan -- the descent was a ballistic trajectory.''

He did not elaborate.

I usually try to let stuff like this roll off my back, but COME ON. This is a high-up manager in the Russian Space Agency, NASA's #1 international partner. To imply that having multiple women onboard a spacecraft is bad luck, or leads to any kind of strange behavior -- or to even imply that part of the reason the Soyuz landed off-course is due to the two women onboard -- is simply unacceptable.

I was supposed to be writing a race report on the Battle of San Jacinto tri, but after being sick for the first half of last week (and I continue to hack up stuff even today), I decided that yesterday wasn't the best day for me to do an olympic distance tri. If it had been a sprint, I might've gone ahead and raced...and once I got out there and saw everyone on the course, I really wished I was racing. But c'est la vie. I had a great time volunteering, and will now look forward to my next tri -- the Silverlake sprint on May 18. The race organizers (the always impressive Tri On The Run folks) were even kind enough to let me transfer my registration to one of their other races, so I'll be using it for Ironbabe in August!

I arrived at Sylvan Beach at 6 a.m. and immediately was put to work helping Jay put out cones to mark the two mile run that made up the first leg of the duathlon. (The event had a triathlon, duathlon, and aquabike.) Sitting in the back of the truck with the wind blowing on me, it was actually pretty chilly! Good thing I had a sweatshirt. I was back in the transition area in time to chat with some BAM racers and watch the first wave start the swim. After that I hopped in my car and drove to the 1-mile mark of the duathlon run to work the water station. There were only 40 or 50 people doing the duathlon, and since it was so early in the race and such a cool morning, only about 10 or 15 people actually took any water from us. That was over quick, so it was back into the car and over to the San Jacinto monument.

This is the only race that I know of in this area that is point-to-point. The swim is at Sylvan Beach in La Porte, but the bike takes racers 25 miles over-and-back across the Fred Hartman bridge and then through the refineries (I know, not the most scenic of backgrounds, but that's what Houston has chosen to build in that area next to the ship channel -- chemical plants and refineries) to the San Jacinto Monument. From there, racers transition to the run, which is two loops near the monument.

The logistics of the point-to-point race were interesting to watch. I've never done this race before and had never seen how it works. There was one transition area at the start, where people racked your bike and bike stuff (helmet, etc). When racers came out of the water, they dropped their wetsuits and swim stuff and hopped on their bikes. But before the race, they had packed a bag with their run stuff -- shoes, race belt, etc. Those bags were transported to T2 at the monument and laid out in order.

I was volunteering at T2 by this point. When racers rode in, they hopped off their bike and gave it to us. As they ran ahead, we took their bikes and racked them on another set of racks set up there. There was another volunteer with a megaphone standing at the bike dismount line who would call out the racer's bib number as we took their bike. The racers had to run a few hundred feet to the transition tents, where another set of volunteers would by this point have their run bag ready to go. Racers dropped their bike stuff, got their run stuff, and headed off for the last portion of the tri. The volunteers would then put all the bike stuff back in the bag and leave it for the racer to pick up after they finished.

Racers also had the option of packing a post-race bag with clothes to change into after the race. After the race, awards were done at the monument and school buses took racers back to the start line, while the bikes were transported back to the start line in a big truck (rather like the MS150). Everything worked like a well oiled machine, and it was cool to watch.

The rest of my weekend was busy and full. Friday night Jose and I went to Star Cinema Grill to have dinner and see Leatherheads. It wasn't the best experience. There was a guy next to Jose who talked through the entire movie, and the theater smelled really musty and damp. It's going downhill, which is really a shame because the concept is cool. And the movie itself wasn't that great. The previews looked funny, but the movie itself is too long and just not that entertaining. I was ready for it to end.

Saturday was filled with errands, including buying and potting a bunch of new vegetables for our ongoing experiment in gardening. We watched the Rockets game that night, but sadly they lost. Hopefully they win tonight.

Yesterday while I was volunteering at the race, Jose and Becca were flying to Angleton and back. They'd originally planned to go all the way to Palacios, but the clouds were descending and the ceiling got too low to go the whole way. Jose took a video of the landing at Pearland on their return leg, when Becca was flying, that is pretty cool.

After not racing in the morning, I did squeeze in a 15 mile ride yesterday afternoon. I made it to Webster Bicycle on Friday afternoon finally to get a new seat for my tri bike and ended up with the Adamo road saddle. It is awesome! The forked front means that the front of the seat is wider, which I found that I liked. (The guy at the store told me that people either love this saddle or hate it.) My ride yesterday was so, so much more pleasant than the last time.

Another busy week ahead. Away I go.

I got this postcard in the mail from my parents yesterday. They were in DC over the weekend visiting my brother and went to the International Spy Museum. I've heard that one is pretty cool, so I'll have to check it out the next time I'm in DC. Except I'll remember -- you gotta watch out for those inquisitive women. Spies, I tell you! Spies!

I just bought one of these for my bike. If I can figure out how to attach it to my tri bike, I'm totally bringing it along for my next race. Hmm. Though it might not be legal for a race. We'll see.

Georgia Tech posted the results of Saturday's Pi Mile 5K and shows me with a 33:34, which is right about what I thought. Woohoo! I'm very happy with that result, a 10:49/mile pace on a thoroughly hilly course. For those that have avoided math since high school, I should probably explain. Remember that pi is a never-ending number that is generally rounded to 3.14. And that's just a hair over the 5K distance of 3.1 miles. And Georgia Tech is a school full of engineering dorks like me. Hence the Pi Mile 5K. (Yes, it was actually a 5K, not 3.14 miles.)

I also forgot to mention that the race t-shirt was perhaps my favorite of all time:

What's not to love about a t-shirt that features a large pi that is actually constructed out of the digits of pi itself?

I'm home sick again. But I'm feeling much better. I expect to be back at work tomorrow.

I think I must have kept the germs at bay for a few days with the constant stream of alcohol provided by Karen's family (I think I drank more in three days than I had in the prior three months), but as soon as we got on the plane to return to Houston, it was over. The low level sore throat I'd had for a few days grew into a roar, and by Sunday night I was feeling pretty miserable. Thus my four day vacation has now become six days and counting -- but the last two days haven't exactly been fun. I hate being sick. But Jose has been taking good care of me and I feel better today than yesterday. Sleeping for 12 hours will apparently do that.

We all had a great time in Atlanta. After arriving on Thursday, we had some time before the evening's bachelorette festivities, so Becca and I took Jose on a walking tour of Georgia Tech. (We stayed at the Renaissance, which is right across the highway from the campus. In fact, our balcony overlooked the campus which I thought was very cool.) We ate lunch at Junior's, a diner on campus where the chicken tenders tasted just like I remember them, before covering the rest of the campus. There has been an enormous amount of construction in the 7 years since I graduated, and there are so many new buildings that parts of the campus are almost unrecognizable. There's also an entirely new section of campus across the highway that has a few stores and restaurants as well as academic buildings, the bookstore, and a new hotel. It would have been really nice to have some of those facilities when I was a student! Alas, the years I was there, GT was simply raising millions of dollars. They didn't spend it until after I left!

Thursday night was girls night (though Jose and Karen's dad were allowed to join us for dinner). We had yummy Mexican food at Casa Grande before heading across the street for dessert and drinks at Cafe Intermezzo -- and presents. From there it was back to the hotel. Karen's grad school friends all had to work on Friday so they headed home, but Karen and Becca and I spent the rest of the night in Becca's hotel room drinking champagne and gossiping.

We got to sleep in on Friday, which was just plain awesome. I hadn't been getting enough sleep for the past few weeks (so what's new), and with the hotel curtains pulled and the room dark, I slept until 11:00!! Jose headed off to visit the Georgia Aquarium, the largest in the world (and yet another new thing that wasn't there when I was at GT), while I joined Karen, Becca, Ashley and Karen's mom for manicures and pedicures. It was lovely, and I'm proud to say that it's been a whole 5 days and I haven't screwed up my manicure yet.

Friday evening was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. The priest doing the ceremony was very funny and kept us laughing during the rehearsal and even during the ceremony itself. Dinner was fabulous (Maggiano's, mmm) and the cold front that Karen's mother had been dreading came through while we were eating. It was raining hard, but it finally slacked off when it was time for us to walk back to the MARTA station.

Saturday dawned overcast and early. Karen had let me know a few weeks ago that the Pi Mile 5K was scheduled for the 12th and that Ashley would be running it. Well if one bridesmaid has time to do it, I figured that I did as well! I was very excited to get to run this 5K on the Georgia Tech campus, especially since I never did it as a student because I didn't start running until I was gone and in grad school. I brought my running clothes (and proudly wore my Texas Independence Relay shirt), but this race was more notable for what I didn't bring -- my watch. Yep. No watch, no nothing. My plan was only to run comfortably and enjoy my jog around campus. In the end, I'm very happy to report that it was a good race! Atlanta is no San Francisco, but it's also not flat. The entire course involved going either uphill or downhill -- there were really no flat areas. I am proudest of the fact that I did no walking! Not a bit! They were calling times at the mile markers, so I do have an idea of my time and pace. I passed mile 1 in 10:40 and mile 2 in 21:32. The last mile had the biggest hills, and I don't actually know what my official finish time was because I got only a glance at the clock as I passed the finish line, but it was something like 33:30.

I got to see my friends James and Chrissy at the race, but only had time to chat for a few minutes before walking back to the hotel. Jose and I ordered room service breakfast and had just enough time to eat it before I had to jump in the shower to get ready for wedding day activities! Ashley picked me up and we headed out to meet Karen and Becca at the hair salon. In yet another example of why I don't particularly like hairdressers, I asked for my hair to be done straight, with the top part pulled back out of my eyes. I ended up with curls everywhere. Not what I asked for, but it looked good so I didn't complain.

The wedding was beautiful and lovely and perfect and after 8 years of dating, Karen and Brian are finally married. The reception was held on the top floor of the Renaissance with an absolutely fantastic view of Atlanta. After all the thunderstorms and rain, the sky was finally clearing as we sat down for dinner, and the sunset was lovely.

Because Byron couldn't make it because he was in Miami learning how to fly 747s, Becca called in Kent as a backup date. He is perhaps the only guy I know that actually enjoys weddings.

During the "money dance," I decided that I wanted to dance with Karen instead of Brian.

I was exhausted by the time Karen and Brian took off, and was asleep within a half hour of getting back to my room. On Sunday morning, Kent came to pick us up for breakfast at Ok Cafe. This was the one time I wasn't busy with wedding stuff, so I got to see all my other friends that still live in Atlanta -- Carter, James, Chrissy, Chris, and Kent. It was great to see everyone, especially because it's been a while since I'd made it back to Atlanta. I used to go a lot more frequently after I graduated, and when my sister was at Georgia Tech, but it had been almost 2 years this time around.

After breakfast, we had a couple hours to kill before Kent so kindly ferried us to the airport, so we randomly went and climbed Stone Mountain -- another Atlanta tourist thing that I never did as a student. It was a gorgeous day and very clear, so we got a great view of downtown from the top.

All in all it was a great long weekend. The wedding was wonderful, but I also was very happy that Jose was able to come with me. After visiting Boston last summer and watching him relive his college days, I really wanted to be able to show him around Georgia Tech and meet the last of my college friends that he hadn't met yet (Karen, Carter, and Kent). I know he wasn't thrilled about a trip that revolved around a wedding, but he made the best of it and we had a great time.

Congratulations Karen and Brian!

Last night at the Astros home opener against the Cardinals, I had the single worst experience I have ever had at Minute Maid Park when I ended up in line for 25 minutes waiting for two pizzas and a coke (at the bargain price of $19.25 I might add) and missed 2.5 innings of the game. I am not even going to go into detail because if I think about it again, steam might come out of my ears. And this was after waiting for 20 minutes in the will call line to get our tickets. When we got to the front, they gave me my tickets for every game that I'd already ordered for this season, from last night through September 28. No wonder the line was taking so long. Why on earth didn't they just print the tickets for last night's game in an effort to shorten the lines??

The game itself was a good one. Wandy Rodriguez battled the Cardinals in a pitcher's duel until the Astros went ahead 2-0 in the 7th on back-to-back home runs by Lance Berkman and Carlos Lee. Wandy left the game after 7 1/3 and Brocail finished the 8th. The Asros added a third run in the 8th on another solo shot by new catcher J.R. Towles. Then came the top of the 9th.

Over the off-season, the Astros finally parted ways with sometimes-awesome, sometimes-crappy closer Brad Lidge. He was never really the same after that home run that Pujols hit off him in the 2005 NLCS, but that's another story. In his place, the team picked up Jose Valverde, a fairly solid closer who will hopefully pitch well this year. However, he didn't exactly pitch well last night.

Valverde promptly gave up three runs, with the third scoring on a play at the plate where the runner knocked the ball out of the catcher's hands. Tie game. Wandy's win gone and replaced with a no decision. I sighed a big sigh and sat down, hoping that this wasn't a harbinger of what the rest of the season will be like.

Things turned out well though. Carlos Lee led off the bottom of the 9th with a single, and Miguel Tejada hit the 4th home run of the game to give the Astros the walk-off win by a score of 5-3 (which, ironically, is the opposite of their current record after 8 games).

The game was over so fast (about 2 hours and 5 minutes) that I was home just after 9:00 and got to watch the second half of the NCAA championship! I gotta admit, a fast baseball game is pretty nice sometimes.

What a weekend! I am exhausted, but in a good way. There were so many activities and so little time!

Things really started on Thursday night, when I met a group at Boondoggle's to celebrate the successful ATV docking. One of my friends has been working on the ATV program as a NASA representative since he started working here 8 (?) years ago, so he was definitely in the mood to eat, drink and be merry. That continued into Friday night with tacos and margaritas at Nick and Heather's place. After we finished the margarita's, we drank official ATV champagne (with a picture of the ATV on the label and everything!), followed by Nick and Heather's anniversary champagne that they never drank on their anniversary, followed by some eiswein (ice wine) from their trip to Germany. I haven't had that much alcohol in one night in ages, but it was spread out enough that it didn't make me drunk, it just made me tired. It's official: I am OLD.

On Saturday I was up bright and early for a BAM board meeting which lasted far too long -- but we did get a lot done, so I guess that's ok. After that it was a quick turnaround to get showered and meet the gang from the night before to head up to the Museum of Natural Science to see the Lucy exhibit. They brought the bones all the way from Ethiopia and we'd all been too lazy to go see them until now. With the exhibit closing at the end of April, there's no time like the present! The exhibit had a lot of information about the history and culture of Ethiopia, but the good part was the Lucy section. I thought the exhibit was very well-done. (There was a lot of controversy when the exhibit arrived over the fact that the bones were even moved from Ethiopia to display in the first place, since they are so fragile, not to mention irreplaceable.)

The exhibit traced the various branches of how humans evolved, and which branch led to us. The common misconception is that we are descended from apes, but of course that's not really true. We share a common ancestor with apes somewhere far, far in the past -- 5 to 7 million years ago. That line split, with one path leading to apes and the other path leading to humans. So Lucy is not an ape, and yet she's not human either. We aren't directly descended from Lucy, because there have been many branches and many different hominids -- we're the only ones that survived.

The most interesting part to me was a wall display that discussed how paleoantropologists determine whether a species was bipedal (walked upright) or not. First you can check where the spinal cord leaves the skull. Our spines connect more or less in the middle of our heads, while Lucy's connected far to the back of her skull. Then you can check the pelvic bone. Ours are short and wide to carry the load of walking upright and provide a base for the leg muscles, while a chimpanzee's pelvis, for instance, is tall and narrow. You can also look at the knees. The reason apes hop around with their knees bowed out is that they don't have fully formed knees. Humans, on the other hand, have fully articulated knees with a kneecap.

All in all, it was a great exhibit and if you haven't seen it yet, make sure to check it out before Lucy leaves Houston.

Sunday was full, but calmer. I worked the BAM water station at Angie's Half Crazy (the new half marathon in Clear Lake), followed that with a 22-mile ride on the new tri bike (desperately need a new seat), spent some time hanging out with Jose, and then had hibachi with a bunch of people for dinner.

On Thursday I go to Atlanta!

On Wednesday, I had my cert sim for my position as Rendezvous Procedures Support (RPS). It's a backroom flight control position for the shuttle supporting the Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer (RGPO) in the front room of Mission Control. I passed! As soon as I finish the rest of my off-console tasks, I'll be officially certified! I will work STS-124 in June and then start training for RGPO after that. Very exciting. (I've also been assigned to my first flight as lead RGPO for STS-129. However, that flight is a very long time away. Sigh.) The sim was hard, and I felt like there were some things that I could have done better, but overall I'm happy to have passed.

Because I had a long day on Wednseday, I was able to take off early yesterday for my first ride on my new tri bike! I am in love with it, so much so that I even made it the wallpaper of my phone. It is so pretty! And shiny! For now, I'm calling it Red, for obvious reasons. (It is red.)

It was a good ride. I made it short, only 9 miles, because I wanted just long enough to get a feel for the bike without starting to get uncomfortable. Observations:

• The aero position, where I'm down on the bars with my arms tucked in and streamlined, is new to me and I expect an increase in back aches and neck aches as I adjust. I could feel my neck tightening after only 20 minutes.
• This bike, due to a combination of being lighter and putting me in aero position, also feels less stable. I don't trust myself at slow speeds in the aerobars -- I just can't maneuver very well. But I expected that.
• This bike is light! As I stood outside my apartment waiting for Garmin to find some satellites, the bike was leaning against my legs. A big gust of wind came along (it was very windy yesterday evening) and almost blew the bike over!
• I'm faster on Red. At one point, I looked down and I was going 25 mph. Granted, this was just after a slight downhill and was with the wind at my back, but still. I never go that fast. Even when I turned back into the wind to head home, I never saw my speed drop below 15 mph. I averaged 16 mph for the ride, and that was with a ton of wind, including stops at stoplights, and taking the first 5 minutes super easy.
• The seat that came with the bike is not so comfortable. After only 10 minutes I was in pain! I will definitely be looking for a new saddle.
• I remembered why I usually avoid riding outdoors immediately after work. Way way WAY too many cars on their way home for the day.

The official Lonestar photos are online, so here are two for you to enjoy. In the first one, I've got my bike gloves in my mouth. Strange, I know, but it was only a few tenths of a mile into the bike and I hadn't put my gloves on yet. I prefer to just grab them in transition and wrangle them on while riding. For short races, I don't even wear them.

From the photos, you might not guess that it was sunny enough to burn my shoulders to a crisp. Burn them enough that they took until last night to recover even enough to start peeling. Yeah. Awesome. I will have some great tan lines for the near-strapless dress I'm wearing for Karen's wedding next weekend. In other news: I am an idiot who apparently cannot apply sunscreen correctly.

Lots on tap for the weekend after a change of plans that means Jose and I are not going to Corpus Christi. BAM meeting tomorrow morning, volunteering at the BAM water station at Angie's Half Crazy on Sunday morning. Anybody out there running this one?

I did my first triathlon in 2003. For five years, I rode my trusty Specialized Sequoia -- a bottom-of-the-line road bike that wasn't even built for racing but rather for comfort and for rides like the MS150. But I was always hesitant to upgrade. After all, while a bike can make you a little faster, your legs can make you a lot faster. I didn't want some fancy bike that my legs couldn't keep up with. And I didn't want to look like a fool going 14 mph on a fancy bike.

It wasn't until last fall that I started thinking that I might finally be worthy of a tri bike. A beautiful, shiny, speedy tri bike, with its geometry designed specifically to make the transition to running easier and the lovely streamlined aerobars to help get in a less draggy position.

Yesterday I decided to buy myself a "little" happy-30th-birthday-to-me, I-got-my-first-paying-design-gig, I-got-my-tax-refund, I-had-a-kick-butt-first-tri-of-the-season, I-just-really-really-really-want-it present.

So I bought a tri bike. And it is awesome. I can't stop looking at it. I can't wait to ride it. And yet I'm stuck in my cert sim until 10:00 tonight! Pure torture, I tell you. Torture.

I spent most of yesterday morning watching NASA TV, because they were showing something rather exciting -- "Demo Day 2" for the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The unmanned "space truck" performed a series of maneuvers that brought it to within just 35 feet of the International Space Station before it started an escape burn that took it sailing away into space again. It will repeat the process and actually dock on Thursday.

I'm not involved in the ATV project at all, but I do work in rendezvous, and the coolest thing about this vehicle is that its rendezvous and docking is entirely automated -- something the US has not yet done with any great success. (The space shuttle is flown manually once it gets within a few thousand feet of the station.)

One of my friends has been working on this vehicle for his entire career (8 years). One of my managers said he remembers attending one of the first ATV technical interchange meetings in 1992. This vehicle has been a long time coming, so it's awesome to see it operating so well. I know it has to feel incredibly rewarding to those who have been working on it for years. For so long it seemed like it was never going to launch. But suddenly there it is, floating next to the ISS.

I love the above photo because, of course, it doesn't take much imagination to turn it into this: