Who I Am -
FULL NAME: Megan Elisabeth Wernke
PLACE OF ORIGIN: Hemingford, Nebraska
(pop. 953 people, 15,072 cows)
AGE: 17
FAVORITE FOOD: Peanut Butter!!!
BACKGROUND IN ASTROPHYSICS: Absolutely none
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I did not want to come on this trip. In fact, I was deathly scared. I know nothing about astronomy, yet here I was, embarking on a two-week venture to try to analyze transient phenomena. I got up at the ungodly hour of 0445 hours and waited for my doom on my 3 1/12 hour flight.
AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! <scream>
I was the first to arrive, and Galen and Don were waiting for me as I ventured forth apprehensively into the Albuquerque airport. But they were both smiling and willing to help me tote my unreasonably heavy suitcase to the van, which showed me immediately what pleasant people I was amongst.
This also stands out in my mind as being the first time I heard the term GAMMA RAY BURST. Once they saw my befuddled look, they tried valiantly to explain it to me, but tended to get too excited, talk too fast, and use too many technical terms for me. I decided right then that I was truly over my head, but at least they were friendly enough to understand. I voiced my concerns, and they reassured me that I was not alone in my ignorance of heavenly objects.
And they were right. The first thing Matt said to me when he arrived was, "So, do you know a lot about this astronomy stuff?" Discovering our mutual lack of knowledge and willingness to learn, I relaxed immediately. My hours of studying my teammates' photographs before arrival were pointless, as all former impressions were shattered as soon as we got to know each other. I loved the rest of my team from the start, juggling in the middle of the concourse and searching for Jon's whale (a.k.a. biplane).
After about 6 hours in the airport, I was more than ready to eat. We had our first taste of "New Mexican" food and sopaipillas and then began the drive to Los Alamos. The ride was equally as fun as the airport, wi th conversation ranging from antimatter particles to tumbling cows to Fiestaware. There are so many trees and hills here compared to my native prairie, I feel almost claustrophobic (the nonexistent atmosphere helped), but it is SO beautiful. I am looking forward to these next two weeks immensely.
We settled into the Hilltop House, our home for the next few weeks. My roommate is Dana from California and she seems great. Then we went to the Canyon School, sort of our base camp for the stay, and Galen and Don began the long and most probably tedious process of giving us a working knowledge of astrophysics. We began with microlensing events (the bending of light around an object directly in front of it, and then refocusing into a single point, allowing you to, in essence, see the object "through" the other one) and then progressed to a discussion on the formation of the universe, which was amazingly clear to me at that point, but mostly lost now. I remember it somehow tied in with Jon's demonstration of a spinning peanut M & M, and that's about it. I was very exhausted by the time we retired at about 0100 hrs the next morning. Never before realized how tired thinking can make you.
Today we visited the Bradbury Science Museum. We got to see random Oppenheimer paraphernalia (my personal hero) and a real human brain! Did you know, they actually perform tests in which they expose the brain and send electric impulses through certain nodes to see which toe twitches or memory is relived? I was astounded. We also proved our worst fears: Fiestaware IS radioactive.
Galen and his sidekicks gave speeches to kick off Astronomy Nights, and I finally began to understand . . . <drum roll, please> . . . GAMMA RAY BURSTS. These phenomena come from the very edge of our universe, yet still emit strong enough energy to drown out all other backgroud gamma rays. And because they are coming from so far away, and have taken so long to reach us, they are most likely evidence from the beginning of time. Imagine if we could understand these; it would explain the creation of our world! I am so astounded by their significance. It blows my mind. Truly, it does. I may very well have to give an informative speech on this. To think that I never knew what these were, when they affect my very existence so profoundly! The world should not be so ignorant.
Galen and Don decided it was time to acclimate us to our new time schedule, so they again kept us up until 0100 hours learning how to use the CCD camera. Don tried to explain all the technical stuff behind the camera, but I decided it was not my area of expertise and focused intead on the superficial (but very important) task of learning how to operate the camera. We spent 2 hours exposing and loading unicolor images of pop cans and warring pigs. We then tried to combine the frames to get a recognizable color picture, only to realize that we had accidentally shifted the camera halfway through. Our porkers had little green shadows. Being how late it was, we all decided we didn't really care and went back to the motel to sleep.
This was by far our longest day yet.
At 2:00 Ed Fenimore came to talk to us about scientific progress. I got to thinking that back in the days of Aristotle, the people thought they understood our universe. Now we tend to laugh at their simple ideas. You have to wonder exactly how off OUR ideas are. Future generations will surely look at our "breakthroughs" and laugh. But then, people will look back at THEM . . . What if there is no answer? The laws that are true for us now may morph into something completely false in the future. The supreme law governing our world is NOT a law, but a continuously evolving framework! Profound thought, if I do say so myself.
Ed also shed even more light on the fascinating GAMMA RAY BURST, which I am really beginning to get excited about, if I do say so myself. We have currently observed about 5,000 of these phenomona, ranging in length from a milisecond to 1000 seconds. They happen completely randomly, but very isotropically throughout our universe. We know that they are so far away from us and moving very fast due to the huge red shift (similar to the Doppler Effect) that shoves the wavelengths out of the visible spectrum into gamma classification. The only way current estimates show to create such vast amounts of energy is by accelerating two stars very, very quickly to a velocity 0.99995 c and colliding them together. But this, of course, is highly unlikely, so we are looking for alternate methods.
Okay . . . Then we visited a colloquium on the Hubble Deep Field telescope. Coming off a confidence high from grasping GAMMA RAY BURSTS, I felt extremely academic sitting in a darkened auditorium with various scholars listening to an astronomy expert's lecture. However, I lost that scholarly feeling in about 2 minutes when he started talking about parsecs. What is a parsec supposed to be anyway? It was all over my head from that point on. I decided then and there that someday I will be able to go to a similar talk and understand every bit of it. Does this mean that I want to be an astrophysicist? I'm not sure, but I hated feeling ignorant about such an impacting subject.
We got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for supper :-) on our way to the Fenton Hill Site for our first night of star-watching. The night started out well enough. We learned how to align and program the Meade and started recording double star data. Then, about midnight, things took a turn for the worse.
It all began with a loss of water pressure at the toilet facilities. (Need I say more?) Upon my return to the site, I was reassigned to active duty in The Dome. This telescope was not nearly as cooperative as the other one, and the next five hours were spent watching Matt and Guthrie frantically trying to keep C-14 from strangling itself. It was also very cold. (Galen did NOT tell us to bring warm clothing.) I'm layered about five layers thick and still shivering. Not a pleasant night. All 7 or so of us crowded in with the hyperactive telescope began to get dome fever and a little snappy. I was not the exception, by any means.
But then - at the very end of the evening / morning I had an experience that made it all worth it. I got to see Jupiter and the moon through the telescope. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jupiter was astoundingly clear, this bright orange disk with four visible moons orbiting it. The moon, though . . . <sigh> It was so amazing; you could see the craters and the line to the dark side! The image was so clear and close, just like the pictures from the movie Apollo 13. I have never experienced anything so beautiful in my life. I see how this could become an obsession for some people.
We created a human fajita within the few sleeping bags to keep warm until it was time to go home and fell asleep at 0600 hrs 19 Jun. The first of many slumber parties ensued.
We started at 1400 hrs again today. This schedule is still hard to get used to. Jim Wren came to tell us how ROTSE worked and explained how it is used to periodically record the sky and explore the elusive GAMMA RAY BURST. It is programmed to do two automatic sweeps of the sky nightly. In addition, it is set up to receive signals from other stations who think they may have found a GAMMA RAY BURST so that it can swing that direction and hopefully be able to document something. However, so far the closest they've come to seeing one is five minutes from the time reported.
I reached a few more revelations today from Jeff Bloch, who spoke to us on interstellar medium. The theory now holds that when supernovae explode, the particles are scattered and form an interstellar dust cloud. This condenses to a new star. Supposedly, these particles are what make up our bodies, originating in the core of a foreign star. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. It really blows a lot of my ingrained thoughts on creation, as taught to me by my church. I've decided to just not think about it. I can be ignorant about such things if it makes it easier for me.
He also explained to us yet more astrophysical terminology: a parsec is 3.26 light years. I can now sleep soundly at night. I just wish I had known this back during the Hubble colloquium; maybe I would have gotten more out of it!
We spent the evening at ROTSE, which is located in a RESTRICTED government area (I felt like I was in the X-Files). We spent our time memorizing as many constellations as possible and trying to dodge waves from the radioactive blocks 10 yards away. Each of us got inside the control station for a few minutes to work with the telescope. With Jim's help, Beth and I entered the coordinates in to view m65 and m66, which are close enough to be in the same frame. We exposed an image for 25 s and then did something like (and forgive me if I mess this up slightly) subtracted off a dark image from file to get rid of hot pixels and then divided by a flat image to even out the camera's uneven light distribution. The corrected image was gorgeous!! I really like camera work, I think.
I already feel so connected to my teammates. I love them all: their senses of humor, their artistic abilities, and their wonderfully logical thought processes. I am getting the feeling 11 more days together will not be nearly enough to know them as much and learn as much as I want to.
This morning was our hike up to the Tsankawi pueblo ruins. I was expecting some partial adobe walls in some little valley. Instead we hiked to the top of a very dry, high mesa and found caves and an overgrown mound with some pottery shards. It was a very harsh reality check for me to see how difficult the peoples' lives had been. They had to hike miles for water, go without shoes, and climb up steep slippery footholds carved in the sides of sheer cliff faces. I decided I could definitely live in a cave, but not that far from the ground and a water source.
We were all hot and very sweaty and thirsty by the time we got our first glimpse of Galen's house. They have so many musical instruments!!!! We ate sandwiches, and Dana and I discovered the piano, which occupied us for a few hours. Then we changed into suits and headed to the White Rock Public Pool, where we played a rousing game of water basketball, incurring many stern glares from the lifeguards who evidently didn't approve of our rough style.
We headed back to work some more on these blasted journals. I left early, and got some much needed personal time at the hotel before everyone arrived at our room.
As today was Father's Day, I called my family first thing this morning (translation: 1300 hrs). But, alas, they were not home. It was very distressing for me, as I had really been looking forward to talking to my adorable sisters. I am realizing exactly how much I miss them all.
Today was a beautiful relaxing day. I feel it important at this point to give credit to Los Alamos' Catholic community. I bravely woke up to do my religious duty and attend mass, and was wonderfully shocked by the beautiful ceremony I took part in. On beautiful sunny days like today, I completely understand my faith. I wish every church service could be so refreshing as that one!
On my return, most people were just waking up and we decided to meander towards KFC for some chicken. My chicken strips were quite tasty, but the mac-n-cheese left plenty to be desired. I also got a salamander squirt gun.
Galen's home in White Rock was our next destination. I cannot stress how gorgeous their house is; just the kind I've always wanted to have when I "grow up". We had a delicious meal and birthday cake for Galen's 48th. Susan is an amazing cook. We played badminton and picked cherries, and Ellie and I had a great time blowing bubbles off the front patio.
The highlight of the day was the music. Dana and I spent a few more hours at the piano playing Beatles' tunes; I had missed my piano so much. Then Galen and Susan pulled out all their exotic instruments and our team tried valiantly to pick out a rendition of Three Blind Mice. It sounded more like an alley cat fight. We stayed and watched Gattaca with the Gislers until Galen finally kicked us (politely, of course) out of the house.
I was thinking as I beautified myself this morning about my team. It started out thinking, "What would we do without Elyne's stories?" Then I began to wonder what we would do without Jon and Beth's squabbling. Or David's Monty Python expressions, or Corrie and Matt's philosophical discussions. Then I began to think about how much I adore my roommate Dana. She is the ultimate sweetheart. I concluded that Earthwatch had done an excellent job in putting our team together. We get along so very well and all complement each other in the best ways.
My day was relatively uneventful. We headed up to Fenton Hill to meet Meg and John Menke, the dome manufacturers. Soon after arriving, I began to feel a little under-the- weather and spent the largest portion of the afternoon sleeping in the van. The rest of the team worked with Galen and the Menkes to repair the dome. Too bad they couldn't do anything about the telescope inside . . .
When night fell, we continued our observance of measuring double stars. I was lucky enough to reserve a spot in the bubble with the Meade this time. We measured all the visible stars on Galen's list and I felt very accomplished. You describe the "seeing", or clearness of the sky, by how well you can separate two stars very close to each other in terms of their diameter (ex: they are 1.5 diameters apart). At first, I was little nervous about the accuracy of my observations, but got a lot more confident into the wee hours of the morning.
The unfortunate "domers" are still cursing at the c14, so we traded them places and caught a little nap, rolled three into a sleeping bag until it was time to clean up and head back to the motel.
We woke up an ungodly early hour this morning: noon. Today was mostly a day of learning. Lots of facts and lectures. I'm going to summarize all of it really fast:
Physics of Star Trek Colloquium by Lawrence Krauss. I've watched Star Trek, like 5 times in my life, but I still found it hilarious. I consider this guy a true genius, just because I believe whole-heartedly that any knowledgable person can spout off physics facts, but it takes a true prodigy to be able to make it both funny and accessible to a general audience. Mr. (Dr. probably, but can't be sure) Krauss was a master. My speech-oriented mind greatly appreciated his speaking technique. It was very refreshing.
Next came the test we had all been dreading. Yes, a test. I knew there had to be some catch to working for the government. They require everyone employed by government funds to pass the GET test. We complained and worried for days, but I personally never got around to studying, and for a very good reason. The test was open book. Now - forgive my un-student-like remark here - what is the point in an open book test, if you actually want your employees to retain any of the testing knowledge? I don't know, but I didn't complain. We all passed, much to Galen's relief. I honestly think he was worried at our nonchalant attitudes toward this serious governmental initiation ceremony.
Don talked to us about Radioastronomy, which is really a whole new fascinating field. It can be used even during daylight hours to explore our universe. He brought a radio telescope up to Fenton, and we're going to try to listen to Jupiter's moon, Io, next trip.
Then I was hit by yet another previously unheard-of term by Todd Haines: NEUTRINO. This are magnificently minute particles emitted by the sun. The most exciting thing about a neutrino is that, while photons can take millions of years to bounce around from the core to the surface of the sun before escaping, neutrinos shoot right through. That means these are evidence of what is happening in the sun RIGHT NOW, not millions of years ago!
The other big talk we attended today was by Jack Hills on asteroids. This was the talk I personally had been most excited about it. I guess Dr. Hills was a consultant on the movie "Deep Impact," which I had watched the week before. I felt I was in the presence of a celebrity. All of his facts were fascinating; I've chosen only the most compelling to record here: A person has the same chance of being killed by an asteroid as he/she does of dying in a plane crash. Sobering, isn't it!
Today is field trip day. I always hated field-trips in elementary school. I guess I'm weird that way, because I would rather just sit at my desk and read. I think most of my apprehension stems from the age-old concern of "Who should I be seat partners with?" Well, this was not a problem with our oversized government van, because it was crowded to the limit this time. Cathy, Guthrie and new face, Diane, were all along with us; I shared my customary back seat with Jon and David.
And I have to go off on a tangent here. Teenagers will complain endlessly if given a seating arrangement; they need their freedom of choice. Yet, if left to their own devices, in my experience, they will undeviatingly sit in the same seat every day. That's how our van worked. I always sit in the back seat.
But back to the progression of events and point of my seating-arrangement story. Poor Diane got the worst seat in the house next to the radio speaker. And she didn't like our choice of music. As anyone who has ever been on a road trip can attest to, music disagreement will really cause friction. Add this to the crowded conditions and controversial topics broached, it was a long drive to Socorro to see the VLA. (Some of you may remember this laboratory as the site for the movie Contact.)
And I had to laugh upon learning the source of this acronym: Very Large Array. Evidently, there was a really uncreative bunch of scientists working on this project. Our tour guide led us through the control building very quickly. Next stop was to climb up on one of the extra satellites. Those things are unbelievably large.
Then began the drive home. It was a very short field trip for all the driving we did. I am sorry to say I didn't gain much in the way of factual knowledge on this trip, but it was still worth the experience to see such a revolutionary research site.
Carol took us on Geology Tour of Jemez Mtns this morning. First fact about the caldera got me really excited. The cattle-grazing land sells for $1,000/acre. Beginning to understand a little better that maybe the five cars stopped are not just looking at the cattle, which had me a little befuddled. Cattle are not exciting creatures, trust me.
Turns out, NM was once all underneath the ocean. In some places you can find an abundance of fossils just lying there for us amateur excavators to find. Carol took us to one such place and we came out with pocketfuls of little bracheopod shells and fossilized coral. My sisters will love this stuff.
Next talk at Bradbury Museum was by Geoff Reeves on northern lights. The video footage was amazing. Never realized before exactly what these lights were. They're formed due to distortions of the earth's magnetic field by solar winds. They extend a very large number of feet into the ionosphere. Sounds like I know what I'm talking about, right? Sort of, but I never quite understand how technically that formed this awesome di splay that covered and swirled through the whole sky. Probably the most fascinating talk for me so far; too bad I was distracted by the pretty pictures.
I'm beginning to get really exhausted at this point in our trip. Lack of sleep and my recurring stomach aches are beginning to take their toll.
Today basically started up at Fenton Hill. Don has brought up his personal telescope to hook up to make up for the uncooperative c14. We are going to get our first chance to apply our CCD skills tonight. I accosted Don first thing to show me how to use it. After hours spent focusing, we began to get our first real pictures. All those technical terms from the second night started falling into place, and I really got the hang of this camera. Elyne, Matt, and I played around with it for a while, mostly learning all the little secrets behind the MIRA program. I really love the CCD camera imaging, although, as Elyne pointed out, there's something wrong when you're staring at a computer screen all night instead of looking up at the sky!
Then, something amazing happened. During one 5 second exposure, we picked up a short (8 pixel) streaking object across the frame. Since common sense would tell you that a shooting star would have covered more distance, I knew exactly what we had discovered. I had seen enough pictures of Hale-Bopp to recognize a comet when I saw one. After a bit of good-natured debate on what to name it, we settled for Jones-Kahn-Wernke. I, of course, wanted full credit, as I was the first person to notice it. But I am a team player and can share credit when need be. Of course, the next frame of that same portion of the sky showed nothing. My momentary glimpses of fame and going down in astrophysical history were shot. Oh well.
The one picture which most stands out in my mind from today is an image from our return to the hotel at 0600 hours, not the night sky. The eight of us, lying half-asleep in the middle of the hallway in front of the door to the hotel restaurant. We had thought we might get breakfast before falling asleep, but hadn't anticipated the Saturday morning late opening. So we just laid down to wait. Must have looked a sorry sight, too, because one of the waiters opened up early just to let us in. Or get us out of the hallway, maybe. We all stumbled to bed and dropped off. I am glad to see I'm not the only exhausted one.
Big question this morning: To go or not to go to Bandelier National Monument. We opt for not going, figuring (as small-minded as it may sound to any archaeologist who may be reading this) that if we've seen one pueblo ruin, we've basically seen them all. Instead, we decide to spend some bonding time together, namely in the form of more quality time at the hotel pool. Too bad the hot tub was still out-of-order.
Infamous Diane from our Socorro trip gave a talk for us on more in-depth radio- astronomy. Feel good to start the talk, I'm ready to learn after our morning off. But as she shows us our first equation I get a sinking feeling. Each complex equation builds on the next and I feel more and more bewildered. Jon understands completely; I think I'm dumb again. My confidence is level is pretty low now.
Meanwhile, we are being interviewed. I never quite caught what for, but we are going to help these people with a video to show people how best to teach science. I feel pretty important, but a little nervous. But the interview wasn't too bad. Lots of questions about how we learned and who from. I didn't come across as dumb, but not necessarily brilliant either. That's okay. They asked for my e-mail and phone to contact me. Very flattering.
Beginning to get hungry by 6:00, but Galen and his food-forgetful mind are not around, so it's no chore to convince Mom to take us to Pizza Hut. Slept on way to Fenton. I'm very upset because I decided I needed a picture of that $1,000/acre caldera land for dad. Maybe next time.
I get to work with CCD camera again; I'm very excited. Still waiting to find my genius here, and I love the images you get. No problems with C CD tonight and we have music to work by! We were lucky enough to catch an eclipsing star behind the moon. I feel very accomplished about that small miracle. Took more pictures of m57 ring-nebula. Wow, I am really amazed at the clear donut-looking image we created. Wish I understood exactly what I'm seeing though.
Spent a lot of time playing with m81 spiral galaxy and trying to find best exposure time and contrast. I'm getting the warm-fuzzies. These images are so amazing!! I love spirals!! Everyone in the world should get to experience the feeling of finding something this awesome in their own telescope. It's universal excitement, like learning to ride a bike.
Found some really neat line-outs on double stars trying to resolve them. Don took us through a series of calculations to figure out that each pixel in our view is worth 1.2 arcseconds and we have separated Mizar/Alcor to 12 pixels, or 14.4 arcseconds. Or not, since we weren't sure if we were looking at the right stars. But at least I would know how to figure that out now if I was! Very good. I've decided that I must be a quantitative person, as I much enjoy the accuracy of line-outs. Looking at the stars subjectively just made me a little too nervous.
I'm really sad that this is most probably the last time I will be doing this. Feel like I'm just beginning to get the hang of it. I could re ally love this job. And I have to laugh at this point <hahahahahahaha> Why am I laughing? This insane memory of myself in eighth grade comes back to me. Adults had started asking what I wanted to be when I grow up. I pulled a job title off a Tide Laundry Detergent commercial: "I'm going to be an astrophysicist." I would say this, because it sounded so impressive, and all the time laugh, because I knew as well as the next person that: not only did no one have any idea what astrophysicists actually did, but there was no way I would ever be smart enough to be one! Yet, here I am, doing astrophysical "stuff" and catching on quite well, if I do say so myself. I want to do this. I do.
I meant to get up for church this morning. Truly I did. But even the best laid plans crumble, and I slept right through it. Probably a good thing, too, because lack of sleep is really catching up with me and I was still pretty incoherent when I finally rolled out of bed at 1000 hrs.
We headed to Santa Fe, and I almost didn't even recognize the city. It looked more like a quaint little village. I think it was the adobe down town that portrayed that image. We tried to be festive and speak in spanish, but that only lasted as far as my vocabulary: "Hola, estamos en Santa Fe! Quiero comer sopaipillas!" En route to find the kachina dolls I was desiring, we came across none other than . . . a gay pride parade. It was a very big culture shock for me. I have led a very sheltered life.
We then visited the Georgia O'Keefe museum. I must say I admire her use of such vivid color, but, to be honest, her work did nothing for me. Kind of reminded me of those contemporary poets we read in Lit:
A toaster
glints
in sunlight:
Toast
I had a very hard time shopping for souvenirs in Santa Fe, mostly due to the outrageously high prices, and my lact of interest in southwestern style turquoise and silver and such. My favorite part of the day was perhaps sitting in the central plaza with my sorbet. I wish I was a photographer. There were so many fascinating people (druggies, people tatooed within an inch of their lives, musicians . . . ) I wanted to capture on film. They were beautiful just because they were so real.
Then we headed to St. John's College for a production of Hamlet. It was held outdoors and the beginning was very anticlimactic (as Shakespeare tends to be), especially as it was still light out. I really got excited when I heard the words, "To be or not to be -" Now that was something I recognized. However my excitement didn't last long, as my sleep mechanism kicked in and I dozed on and off throughout the beginning of the second act. I am ashamed of that, too, because I was truly interested in what was going on. I found, to my amusement, that everytime a bug would fly in front of the spotlights, my head would whip around, sure I'd spotted a falling star. I just wanted to back out on Fenton, under the vast sky.
The team tried to work on our presentation to be given to all the informed astrophysicists tomorrow, but our attention span was short. And we ARE a group of procrastinators. We decided there was no time like tomorrow. And went to bed.
Woke up this morning way too tired to concentrate on a presentation. Or these log books. (Thank you to whoever is reading this, by the way; it took a lot of time.) We broke up into groups to each work on a section of the talk. I was to work with Elyne to talk about the CCD camera, which was very flattering, as this was definitely my favorite part.
Cathy got me a little worried when she told us how last year's team spent hours writing their presentation. I was pretty confident we could all pull together a little quaint speech. But, she has a point: there's no BSing these scientists. They know their stuff.
So we went into our lunch presentation a little (no, a lot) nervous. Most of the scientists seemed very friendly, but still . . . Somehow, we pulled it off. Really well, in fact. They asked us a lot of questions about the advantages of Internet hook-up. We told them the truth: There is truly nothing like seeing the sky for yourself, with your own microscope. But if that's not possible, we must try the next best thing. I think we impressed them, and the visiting professor from Johns Hopkins said something similar to, "We may give you full ride, your experience is worth it." Aaaggghhh!!! <scream>
Then we got to see the Alexis satellite control sock and the under-construction ROTSE II. It occurred to me as the scientists spoke to us so knowledgably that: These are the people who are making new discoveries and changing our world. I suddenly looked at them each differently. I was awed. I can only hope to make a difference some day the way they are. All I could think was the cliche, "I KNOW them!!"
Four more events finished off our day:
Todd Haines continued talk on neutrinos. I decided that I really hate Quantum Mechanics at this point in my life. I should learn it.
Our fairwell dinner with everyone there to say good-bye, hand out gifts, and share one last time together.
The team's journal signing session in took place in the usual room: ours. It seems there was no way I could say all I wanted to to these people. We shared a very special two weeks together, and I cherish each and every one of them so much. The memories we wrote in those books will be cherished for a lifetime. Better than yearbooks anyday!
At midnight, we headed out to paint our rock. It stood on the corner of two main highways leading into White Rock. After much discussion about comma placement, we dug in and ended up with a beautifully whitewashed stone reading, "U Rock, Galen!" and "Thanks Don and Todd." It was a wonderful experience. Then we drove around, suspecting (correctly) that the half-naked delinquents in the juxtaposing convenience store parking lot might try to vandalize it. We corrected their damage and waited around until the coast was clear, proud of our accomplishment and apprehensive for Galen's reaction the next morning.
Two weeks are over. Perhaps the most fact-packed, fun-filled, wonderful two weeks of my life. And I had this beautiful good-bye scene all planned out, with the chance to hug and say something meaningful to each and every person I'd met.
If only things worked out the way we plan! I awoke to chaos. Jon lost his ticket. So I loaded my amazingly heavy suitcase into the van while everyone watched him re-unpack his bag in a frenzy.
My flight was the earliest to leave, and we were cutting it short. So Mom took off with me, Jon's ticket still on the loose. I didn't have t ime to say good-bye. Didn't even get to see some of them. Just a few quick hugs and I was gone. I cried on the way to the airport. (Tried to hide it from Mom, but I think she knew. Moms just know these things.) This was not how it was supposed to happen.
We checked my bags and headed for the gate. When, who do I see before me, but Elyne and Guthrie and David? I started yelling for them, ecstatic at one last good-bye. Jon had found his ticket almost immediately after I left. He'd "had it all along." And Galen must have booked it there, because they arrived at the same time we did.
I was one of the last people to board the plane, and the last picture I took was from the boarding ramp of everyone wishing me off. Some were waving, some were already heading away toward their own destinations. And isn't that how life goes? People enter our lives. Some remain right by us till the end. Others get lost in the rush of life and our separate journeys. But they all touch us and remain in our hearts and minds, like a picture that will never fade.