Goodbye Florida!

Shuttle's landed after a very successful servicing mission. Our hardware's been removed and shipped back to Goddard. That means it's time to pack up and head back to Maryland :(

Florida has been amazing! beautiful weather, beach in my backyard, space shuttles, per diem, surfing and seafood have all been great. i'm really gonna miss the area and all the people i've met down here. i really hope i get the chance to come back down here for future missions.

i put together this little slide show to reminisce...enjoy and thanks for following my blog!

BYE FLORIDA

Fay Update

Here's the storm now:

See previous post for the before shot.



The storm is getting closer to cocoa beach and is expected to hit the water again sometime tomorrow. After getting in the water, it's supposed to become a full hurricane. THEN its track will swing back to florida again up by jacksonville. craaaaaaaaaaazy.

Watch Your Step!

July 9th


Things have been going waaaaaaaaay too smooth, and today our good fortune ran out. I show up to the 8 o'clock meeting ready to go. Looking around, i notice everyone that i work with is out except a tech. Steve begins the meeting saying that marty slipped getting out of the shower and cut his head open on the sink, so he and dave (another one from our crew) are heading to the hospital. Steve continues saying greg has called in sick. So i'm stuck here by myself and we have to pretty much set everything up and start certifying everything today!!! greg doesn't have any detailed plan for me to follow, so i just jump in.

I finally get over the feeling of drowning in work and start to take care of one thing, getting cables cleaned. On my way back from the clean room, steve stops me and says i have to support the mission simulation (JIS) that started an hour ago. Of course nothing works to allow me to call in to the JIS so i'm calling all sorts of IT people. Have to leave the JIS to get the tech guy working on something, so i run over to the clean room and start him.

Thankfully at like 11 dave shows up and says marty is ok. He described marty's hotel as a crime scene: blood in the bathroom, blood all over the sink, blood on the floor, every towel was red and marty was laying on the couch (which was covered in blood) getting bandaged by the paramedics. Crazy...

Dave takes over at the JIS so i can run around with the EGSE. Before i know it it's 5 and i'm outta there!


That night breda and i cruised in the old-man car, checking out the southern part of the town. then we hit up Ron Jon (which i will document later. wild place) and then the irish bar across the street from our apt (paddy's). A nice end to the day

It begins!

July 3rd 2008


Space Suit Colin blog begins. Still in Maryland, getting everything out to the loading dock to be shipped to KSC. I had 10 boxes total, which is kind of a lot but not everyone else is homeless. One guy who is heading down solo has 7, which is about 1/3 his normal amount.

Breda and I will be heading down to Florida on Saturday early. We'll probably stop at the outlets and will spend the night at Grandma's Saturday and Sunday (to hopefully avoid any July 4th traffic). We'll then get up super early again on Monday and drive the rest of the way to Cocoa Beach.

These past few weeks have been absolutely terrible, but I'm hoping Florida will be more laid back.