Could have been an astronaut...

Okay, one of the best days in Houston ever. Considering it's a Saturday maybe it isn't that surprising but today was awesome. I want to thank Kay Burns for all her work organising the last week and today...amazing.

Anyway, woke up, had breakfast, and got on the bus. Long drive to Galveston but we got there around 9:30. Our first stop was to tour the Ocean Star. It was an offshore rig that used to drill exploration wells in the Gulf of Mexico but it has since been changed into a museum in Galveston's harbour. I've been on land rigs before but this is definitely different right from the start. You really see how you take for granted all of the room we have in Alberta. Here you need to have everything you might need on hand and in a smaller space. The inside has lots of models of other types of rigs, ships, and production towers. It's unbelievable how big some of them are.

Next stop was NASA. Yay says the engineer in me. We started off with lunch at their tourist center with a very special guest speaker. Charlie Bolden. He's a pilot with NASA and flew 4 shuttle missions back in the 80's and 90's. He's the one that flew the Hubble Telescope up into orbit. Very cool guy. I ended up asking a few questions at lunch. Next we jumped back on the bus to go to a few of the other buildings on the Johnson Space Center. One was the Sonny Carter training center. This is where they have the gigantic pool with all of the space station mock ups for neutral buoyancy practice. Closest thing we have to weightlessness on Earth. We also visited mission control and the other training center where they have the complete "to scale" space station. We also got to see the Canada Arm practice center. I was bragging about the strength of a Canadian arm to some of the Americans. Charlie came with us on the bus and through these other buildings. Seriously cool stories.

A quick bus ride took us to our last event of the evening. A nice, relaxing boat tour around Clear Lake and some of the Gulf. Or at least that's what we thought it was going to be but Kay had something much better planned. Apparently the DJ from the previous night's casino party (I wasn't there, went on a different dinner) was so good that she asked him to come back for the boat. Great idea. The food was pretty good, the beer was cold (and free), but the music was by far the best. I only had a few drinks tonight but I dance for hours. He had games, two-stepping, battle-of-the-sexes....the whole package. I managed to grab the spotlight for a bit by putting on a country dance demonstration with Sonya. Really impressed the rest of the ladies. No one said no to a dance after that (not that any of them said no before). The only problem was that as the night went on the wind died and it got super hot. Worse than a high school gym. I was a little sweaty by the end. For anyone that things that a bunch of engineers from all different parts of the world wouldn't be able to have a great party together...I have photographic proof that you're wrong. Maybe even a couple of videos too. That's all for now. Have to be up early for a golf game with Nevin.

Peace y'all.