ISU Reunion

This weekend Jeff and I came to San Francisco, California for the International Space University (ISU) Reunion. (ISU was the program I did last year in Barcelona.) This year, the program is being held at the NASA Ames Research Center.

When we got into San Francisco, Jeff's brother Dave picked us up, and we met up with our friend, Janet, who also lives in the area. We grabbed a quick lunch and chatted before heading back to Dave's apartment. Dave lives in Mountain View, just a few miles from Ames, so it worked out really well to stay with him.

The first event of the reunion was on Friday - we went and met up with people for lunch and went on a tour of Ames. It's a really cool facility. It has a hanger bay for a zeppelin.

It also has one of the largest wind tunnels in the world. We were able to walk around inside it - one of the air intake grates is the size of eight football fields.

There was also a dinner at the NASA Ames Exploration Center, which had some really cool exhibits - like this moon room, which had a real moon rock in it.

There were a lot of people from last year (SSP08) who came to the reunion. We got a great group shot.

On Saturday we had an SSP08 reunion dinner at a restaurant that just happened to be less than a block from Dave's apartment. But the big event of the night - and the last of the reunion - was the Space Masquerade. Emma, Kris, Jeff and I dressed up as "Hitchhikers" from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We had shirts that said "Don't Panic" and we carried around towels all night.

Our friend Jaisha dressed up as the cow that jumped over the moon, and another friend, Paul, was the moon.

We got another good SSP08 group pic at the Space Masquerade.

Overall the reunion was really fun. It was great to see people from last year, hear about people's experience this year, and spend some time in California.

Jeff and I are going to a friend's wedding in Colorado Springs next weekend, and rather than fly all the way back to the East Coast and then almost all the way back to the West Coast a few days later, we're just staying in California for the week and working from here. I'm looking forward to the nice weather (around 75 degrees most days) - especially since in DC the forecast for tomorrow is 100 degrees and humid! Kris and Emma are in town for a few more days too, so hopefully we'll all meet up downtown for dinner at some point. Should be a fun week!