Space Camp - Day 6 - Graduation and Good-bye

I'm sitting in the Huntsville airport waiting for my flight home. (Just a note, free Wi-Fi is wonderful.) And, as has been the case many times this week, my head is kinda swimming. In some ways, this has been a very, very long week. I've gotten to do so much stuff. I've met people who were strangers six days ago who I now consider friends. I've conquered some fears and had my priorities realigned more than a couple of times. I've learned much about all things related to space, about myself and about other people. In other ways, it's been a very short week. Especially the past few days have felt like the time has just flown by. It's hard to believe it's Friday already and I'm coming home. In some ways, I'm ready to come home. In others, I want more time. As I said, my head is still swimming. I'll need some time for reflecting on everything that's happened. But, fortunately, I have the rest of the weekend to reacclimate to my real world. I'm going to need every minute of it (and probably a few more).

Today was graduation day. Breakfast was pushed back 30 minutes to allow us to pack up our gear and move out of our rooms. I didn't think it would take me that long to pack, so I set my alarm for 6:30, an hour before breakfast. I didn't plan to run as I didn't want to have to pack sweaty clothes (or at least that's the current excuse.) Turns out, I woke up about 6 and figured I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. I was down in the bottom of the hab, my gear safely stowed in the Bravo Classroom (where we designed our team mission patch and built our rockets. This was our work room for the week.) by 7. I thought about wandering around to take some pictures around rocket park, but instead ended up just hanging out with the team as people filtered down. I also continued to collect pictures off people's memory cards. Once I get home and get a few that will have to be sent to me (from people who either took way too many pictures or who had Sony cameras, which I can't read the memory cards for), I'll burn DVDs of pictures and send them off to the team.

It's been neat getting to look at everyone's pictures. I find it especially telling to watch the evolution of people's pictures as the week progresses. At the start of the week, it's all pictures of the facilities and equipment. Then there's pictures of the camera's owners doing various activities. And, as the week continued to progress, the pictures became more group pictures, other people doing various activities or just hanging out. It's another picture (no pun intended) of our coming together as a team.

After breakfast, our last Space Camp meal, we headed to the Astrotrek building (I think that's the name. Astrotek maybe...I'll look it up.) for the 1/6th G chair and the MMU simulators. The 1/6th G chair was originally used by the Apollo astronauts to simulate walking on the moon, which has 1/6th the gravity of the Earth. This is one of my favorite sims as it's just fun to get to bounce around. They've added a lunar surface type runway area that you get to bounce down and back on using the three primary methods of lunar movement. Those are the bunny hop, the sideways hop and the slow motion jog. For me, once I get a little momentum going, I'm good to go. Bunny hopping and sideways hopping are a lot of fun. Slow motion jogging has never been my favorite. But it's still fun. I actually used some of the sideways hopping moving around the bottom of the UAT (underwater astronaut trainer) yesterday during my scuba EVA during the EDM (more on that later...possibly in another post). The MMU is a mockup of the manned maneuvering unit, the personal propusion jetpack type thing that was used for a time on shuttle missions to allow astronauts to move about during EVAs untethered to the orbiter. It is no longer used, as the system doesn't have a lot of backups, should the propulsion methods fail. If that were to happen, the astronaut could be stranded outside the reach of anything or anyone attached to the orbiter or, worse, drifting away from the orbiter. This simulator is a chair mounted on four pads that allow the whole contraption to hover above slightly above the floor. Joysticks on the unit allow control of roll (to 90 degrees in either direction, so you can't go upside down), pitch (the range isn't a lot, not really enough to notice) and yaw (turning the whole unit) as well as forward and lateral motion. This is one sim I hadn't done before, so it was neat to get to try it out. Unfortunately, I had to stay on my square of concrete and so I could only intimidate Martin (callsign Pretty Princess) rather than actually go after him (all in fun, of course). But it was still a lot of fun and I think everyone enjoyed the opportunity, although none more than April. She had seen the MMU in various brochures and on the web site and had been asking about it all week. It was neat to see her enthusiasm.

After the sims, we filled out evaluations of our week and then had time for the gift shop. I supplemented my tshirt and polo shirt collection as well as picking up a few gifts. I figure it's cheaper to buy it here than pay for shipping when ordering things online later. In the gift shop, I got a chance to briefly meet Jeremy's wife and three daughters (all redheads and very cute). It was a bit strange to see Jeremy in the husband and father mode, especially after working with him during all of the missions all week long. Required a bit of a mindset shift. That's happened a lot this week. Then it was time for graduation.

Graduation is always an interesting time. While it's fun to have a little ceremony and get awards and stuff, it's also the last official function for our team. While we will always be team Marshall, our time at camp had come to an end. There were some awards given at graduation. The team I was not on won the Area 51 award. My team joked a bit that we were just too good. We didn't have any real personality or communications problems to work through. And, of course, we annoyed the facilitators a bit with our successful completion of each mission. :) I'm sure the other team earned the award. The second award was for Space Bowl, the Jeopardy style trivia competition that we did on Thursday evening. The mission specialists won by a slim margin and took home the tshirt. The final award was the Right Stuff award. This is the personal award that goes to the trainee who best embodies the spirit of the program, the one who steps up to lead, encourages others and all of that. The award went to Jason (which didn't surprise me at all). Upon receiving the award, Jason said a few words about knowing how difficult the decision for who is to receive this award is (if you don't have your score card handy, he's a former counselor) and that while he was honored to have received it, there was another on our team who also embodied all that the program is about, who conquered a lot of obstacles and had an incredible week. And then he presented the award to April. There were more than a few misty eyes among the team. When Jason put the medal around April's neck, her face lit up so bright. She was so proud and excited and probably a little overwhelmed. It was a great gesture by Jason and one that I'm pretty sure everyone on the team agreed was the right thing to do.

After graduation, we started to say goodbyes and the team scattered a bit. Lucy had to catch her bus to the airport pretty quickly and a few people took off with their families. I joined Cori, Jason, Reagan, Bruno, Ray and Martin for lunch at the Mariott, as lunch at the cafeteria wasn't provided for us. It was nice to have some more time to hang out and chat about the week before heading home. And the food was pretty good.

By the time we had paid our bills and chatted for a bit, it was time for Bruno, Ray and Martin to catch their bus to the airport. I would have been on that bus (and on Martin's flight), had I taken the earlier flight home. But, I decided I might want a bit more time to hang out with people and prefered not to ask someone to fight rush hour traffic to come pick me up at the airport. And that turned out well (at least the extra time with some people bit. We'll see about the traffic bit in a few hours). Cori, Jason, Reagan and I wandered about the museum, did some things out in rocket park including riding Space Shot (which I had declined riding before, to ensure that it wouldn't mess with my head, stomach, ears or anything else and make me unable to dive). We enjoyed some ice cream (because we didn't get any at lunch today) and then wandered back to the hotel so that Jason, Cori and Reagan could get ready for helping out with the Be Ready camp mock disaster this evening. They will be injured (or possibly killed) in the mock disaster that the campers have been training all week to respond to. Apparently this is a camp put on by the Alabama TSA to teach twelve year olds respond to natural and man made disasters. For this disaster, the campers will have to handle the situation completely on their own (except for any safety situations, of course). There are to be bodies in the lake, simulated fires, medical and other emergency response teams that they will have to direct. It sounds pretty cool and something that I think I'd like to be a part of, even though I'm well beyond 12 years old. Once I get home, I'll have to look into getting CERT (community emergency response team) training. That sounds not only interesting but also very useful.

Then it was time for final goodbyes. I've come to realize especially recently that the goodbyes that are the hardest to say are the ones that mean the most. They're not supposed to be easy. Being seperated from friends and family is never fun, even if it's just people you've only known for a week. There were hugs all around and promises to keep in touch. In some cases, I know we will, at least for a time. In others, perhaps we will not. It's the way life goes and I've been through it many, many times. I hope to keep in touch with some of these people for a long, long time. I know that some will be people I think of fondly on occasion. And there will be some who will fade from memory fairly quickly. Again, it's just how this world works. How I long for the day when I won't have to say goodbye ever again....especially today. Cause there's no easy way to say goodbye. Perhaps some of us will be able to get together for another Space Camp adventure. I'd love to have any of team Marshall on my team at some point in the future.

Until that time, I've got lots of pictures and memories and we've got email and telephones, cars, airplanes and the US Postal Service. And I've got some more friends to visit.

Space Camp is a very special place and I've had another week. More thoughts later. Until then, I need to get ready to get on the plane to head towards home and back to my real life and the rest of my family.