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All posts for the month July, 2013
Sunday the 17th of February, Day 8:
We had to get up VERY early for disembarkation. Unfortunately, the boat was delayed. We had to make a stop at Nassau because someone had a medical emergency and then getting into port there was a 50 MPH headwind. Ultimately we ended up leaving for our Kennedy Space Center tour about an hour and a half later than we were originally supposed to. So getting up that early wasn’t really needed.
It was cold in Florida, or at least much colder than I had expected. The whole trip I had been on the warm side, so I continued to wear shorts when we got off the boat. I think it was mainly the wind was cold when we got into the sun it was fine.
At the Kennedy Space Center it was cool to see all of the rocket parts. We got to see launch pad A. There was also an eagle’s nest on the road to the launch pads. We also saw alligators, pigs, and tons of birds as they took us around.
I got to touch a moon rock! Ok, so the rock was just a normal looking rock that had probably gotten polished from the thousands of people that touch it. But it was from the moon! In one building they had a Saturn 5 rocket hanging. It was HUGE! I didn’t realize it, but they said that the “current” shuttles were largely just used for getting parts up to the space station for building it.
Outside they had a huge rocket “garden” where they had many of the various rockets that they had used in the past.
There was also a launch experience to demonstrate what it would be like to be in a shuttle. They didn’t seem to get many G’s, but did seem to tip us all the way back, and then shake the seats, simulating G forces. It was fun!
It was sad to leave. Thanks for all of the fun, memories, and experiences. Till next year!
Saturday the 16th of February, Day 7:
This was our last full day on the boat. Again it was at sea as we headed back towards main land.
In the morning I ended up playing a game called Hunter and Gatherer with the guy that created it. I believe he is still working on it, because he was taking notes on how to improve the game. It was an odd game, but fun.
Then on to the Science Fair! Yeah, we had a Science Fair on the boat! Apparently one of the kids that was coming on the cruise was going to miss out on their Science Fair back home, so people organized one on the boat. There were several entries. Two of them were on how we perceive things and optical allusions that might cause our minds will play ticks on us. One girl did a demonstration on “blubber” and how it is able to insulate you from the cold. There was another girl that did an experiment on what kind of apples would rot the fastest. In the end her experiment didn’t work out the way she had expected, but it was cool to see her think about the other possibilities that could have caused it. I think there were 10 displays in all!
After packing a little we played Alhambra. This was the first game we actually finished! Luckily we finished just in time for the 2pm show.
At dinner we met a couple new Sea Monkeys, Steve and Sarah, lots of good awesome conversations. After dinner we went to see if we could get a picture of the Zamboni. We were not able; they were already setting up for the farewell party. So we watched some of the karaoke that was going on just outside. There were a lot of impressive people that went up to sing. Joel, Emile, Wil, and Anne, all went up at some point. Anne has an amazing stage presence, really getting into the music, dancing around and goofing off.
I was excited for the farewell party, but at the same time very sad. I mean this was going to be one of the last times I get to see any of these amazing people. The cruise was coming to an end. It was cool at how different the two parties were. I knew basically no one at the first party, but I felt like we actually knew some of the people now. There were of course a bunch of free drinks floating around, but none of them were really that great.
After we got tired out, we called it a night. However, we ended up flipping through channels a little on the TV, partially because we still needed to fill out some paper work and stuff to leave the boat. Beth ended up finding some weird movie in Spanish on the TV. It took us a while to recognize what it was, we think it was the newest of the Spider Man remakes. We then let it play a little more, just because watching dubbed movies is kind of funny.
Friday the 15th of February, Day 6:
Another day at sea! This was our first day of heading back to land. Beth got up and went for a workout, and I slept in a little more. The extra sleep was awesome.
I headed off to breakfast and then went down to the game room. I got to watch some people play Nun on the Run, which looked like an interesting game. Everyone is trying to move around stealthily to achieve a goal. This translates into everyone keeping track of where they are privately instead of by the tokens on the board.
When we had first gotten on the boat, there was a “Speed Meeting” session, so that Sea Monkeys could meet each other. Apparently, there were other people like me that had completely forgotten about it and missed it so they had a second round. I got to meet a bunch of people, it was a lot of fun. Everyone had different things that they did, programmers, self employed, and a SCUBA dive instructor. Sadly, nothing really stuck about who was who or what their background, but it was a lot of fun and some of the faces seemed familiar later on.
It was then off to lunch with Beth, it was cool because we ran into a bunch of Sea Monkeys. We actually started to be able to recognize and socialize with them. After lunch we headed off to the front of the boat with Randall’s wife to look for flying fish and other wild life that might be near by. I didn’t end up seeing much, but what I did see was awesome. I didn’t realize how far some of the flying fish could fly. I always assumed it was just that they would jump out of the water, not that they could actually glide for a bit. It was awesome to get to talk with her about the various things she has worked on.
We then headed into the show for Randall, The Doubleclicks, and Wil. It was all amazing! It was fun to hear Randall talk about stuff that you don’t hear as much such as his ball pit and some of the ways he goofed off in the past.
After dinner we ran into Randall and his wife and she asked us if we were going to the nerd trivia. Of course we were! We quickly changed out of our fancy clothes and headed down. Beth and I were there for one question before Randall and his wife showed up to join our team! Sadly, we only had 3 more questions before the trivia had to end. Apparently there was some scheduling conflicts and we lost the room.
It was cool to see Randall wearing the medal that one of the Sea Monkeys gave him. On Valentine’s Day his wife wrote a touching post on Twit-Arrr about how great it was to have Randall there to take care of her during chemo. One Sea Monkey had extra medals from science fair (SPOILERS!) and so they gave one to Randall.
We then headed up to the main pool for the Movie Night. We watched a quick movie that was a mini web series, all of the Learning Town, and bit of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. However I was getting sleepy so I called it a night. But it looked like it might have been an awesome horrible 80’s movie to watch.
SOOO MUCH AWESOME!