So, I’ve been crazy busy.
My Vomit Comet team is in town and I have spent a lot of time out at Ellington helping them prepare their experiment for reduced gravity flight. I had to make a few edits and additions to their test data package, but they’re now ready to go. My team flies on Thursday and Friday, and I get to fly with them on Thursday! It’ll be my 5th flight on the Vomit Comet. Can’t wait!
My reduced gravity flight medical expired last year, so I’ve also had to go through physiological training again with them, including a whole morning of classwork on Friday and a “flight” in the hypobaric chamber earlier today. This was my third time in the hypobaric chamber, and it’s always interesting to see how your body responds when its suddenly thrust into the equivalent of 25,000 feet altitude. The lack of oxygen affects you immediately!
In other news,we finished working on the bonus room on Thursday night! We still have more to do down the road, but it looks awesome for now. We got the bookshelves set up and two big walls painted. I’ll post photos soon.
Jose’s mom and brother came up for the weekend and we had a great time with them. A “cool” front blew through early Saturday morning and left some AWESOME weather for the weekend. I’m betting it’s our last weekend of really pleasant conditions before summer really arrives, so we made sure to thoroughly enjoy it. We spent Saturday afternoon at the International Festival downtown and enjoyed the arts, crafts, displays, and music.
On Saturday morning I headed down to Galveston to do the Lonestar Sprint Triathlon. I was supposed to do the olympic distance, but — long story — I ended up doing the sprint. I’ll post more later, but it went very well. They actually canceled the swim portion of the tri because the afore-mentioned cold front blew through RIGHT at race time, which whipped up some large swells and whitecaps in the bay. That turned the race into a bike-run, so I decided to go as hard as I could. My results were encouraging. More about that when I get a chance!