That's right, boys and girls. It may be hard to believe, but Hutchinson, KS is home of one of the most amazing collections of early rocketry and space flight artifacts outside of the Smithsonian. I'm referring to the one and only Cosmosphere which Katie and I just took a trip to see on this fine Memorial Day. This is a town of 41,000 people about an hour's drive due NW of Wichita and not the type of place you would expect such a collection to reside. The museum proper isn't all that large physically but I would guess that it would take over four hours to go through and just read all the placards. Not only are there explanations for the artifacts but the museum also provides a very good history of early rocketry and space-craft itself.
And the artifacts, well, this is nothing to sneeze at. To name a few of the more impressive items, the museum is currently the custodian of:
-One each of the V-1 and V-2 rockets developed by Germany in WWII.
-What are effectively serial numbers two for both Sputnik I and Sputnik II (These are the satellites that would have been sent to space if the originals didn't make it.)
-A space suit used by one of the astronauts on Apollo 13.
-The engineering development unit of the lunar module used in the Apollo missions (one of the few left in the world as most are sitting on the moon right now).
-The actual, honest-to-goodness Apollo 13 command module in which the astronauts managed to survive their treacherous voyage.
-A fully-assembled but decommissioned SR-71 Blackbird.
Like I said, these are just the highlights. There are a ton of smaller items from the early days of rocketry which are simply truly amazing to see in-person. There is also an OMNImax theater and planetarium to round out the outer-space experience. Katie and I were more than occupied from 10am to 4pm and we didn't quite get to see it all.
I would have never thought in my entire life I would be able to do something like touch an SR-71 Blackbird with my hands or see any actual Apollo command module but, well, I've done both now. So if you're ever in the area and have a little bit of a space-bug in you, I would heartily recommend you stop in and spend the time exploring the museum. I think it will be worth your while.
Who would have though such wonders would be found in Hutchinson, KS?
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Monday, May 30, 2005
The Best Radio Program Ever
Right now I'm listening to a recording of one of the most unique radio programs that is nationally syndicated, This American Life. NPR does the distribution and if you've got a chance, I recommend tuning in. I have found, after listening for a year or two on a pretty consistent basis (now even more consistent due to the wonders of TiVo for radio, the radioShark) that this is a winner of a show. Probably not something to schedule your life around, but during that hour broadcast you can pretty much count on something you have never thought about popping across the airwaves. If you're a fan of new ideas and interesting things to mull over in your mind, this is a fertile feeding ground. Airing every weekend on a public radio station near you.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Hiking and Ticks
Just back from a hike at the Konza Prairie with my wonderful girlfriend. Katie was very patient with me today as I forced us to stop many times to take pictures of the scenery. You know, for Kansas, this is a very nice hike. Lots of trees, big spaces, the Flint Hills to roam around in; just what my Pacific NW upbringing needs after four months on the prairie.
Something I never dealt with back where I grew up, though, were ticks. I was in the Boy Scouts during my middle and high school years and we talked of ticks often. In fact, one of the hottest Boy Scout debates (at least in our troop) was the best way to deal with ticks. The common cures ranged from the much maligned gentle tweezer pull (But if their heads break off, it'll get infected!) to the hot burnt-out match to using vegetable oil at the bite location to suffocate them. Though the debates were fierce at times the vegetable oil trick seemed to usually win out in the end as it seemed the least invasive. The funny part about all of this is the fact that NONE of us had EVER seen a tick in person. It may have been the weather forcing us into long-pants for most of our camping trips or maybe there just aren't as many ticks up there; it doesn't matter, we were all blithely ignorant.
As of today, I have now passed this adolescent stage and have begun my adult life when it comes to ticks.
Being male and not having the social pressure to shave my legs, I tend to let the hair on my legs grow out. From what I've noticed, this is common among most men (exceptions that come to mind are hard-core bicycle racers and swimmers). Well, today that came back to bite me, literally, thanks to wearing shorts on this approximately twelve mile hike through the prairie.
On our way back to Wichita, I noticed a small insect that looked like a proportionally-challenged spider crawling around on my legs. I let it crawl onto my finger and then tried to kill it by squishing it against the dashboard of my car. Well, things didn't work out so well and the little guy ended up in Katie's seat. Note to self: Katie is not a big fan of insects. She ID-ed the guy as a tick when it landed in her lap but wasn't able to finish what I started due to her somewhat excited state. He escaped somewhere on her side of the car and I volunteered to take the next exit so we could hunt him down.
We never found him but decided it would be a good idea to look ourselves over to make sure we were clean. (This was probably the first time in my life I was verbally encouraged to intently study a woman's legs.) Katie was tick free but, I, on the other hand was not. We found two of those guys buried in my legs. TWO.
The Boy Scout training evaporated from my brain; I wanted those little buggers out now! Let me tell you, if you've ever tried pulling a tick off a non-smooth surface, you know how hard it can be. It took me a few minutes to finally wrest one of them from my thigh; Katie got the other one in just a few seconds. As I found out, though, the only thing harder than getting the tick out is killing it. Without any of my blood in them, ticks are very thin and flat and even trying to crush this one between my thumb and index finger did not succeed in killing it. I tried this on a fourth tick I found while driving home; he made the same mistake the first one did and just crawled onto my finger looking for blood. I didn't look back and simply mashed him against my thumb for fifteen seconds before flicking him onto the dash (and not onto Katie's lap). He was still moving around, trying to get off his back! How do they do that? Again, Katie came to the rescue by picking him up with a tissue and throwing him out the window.
I'm about to go take a shower and give my whole body one more check but before I go, let me say this: probably the most unique experience in all of this adventure is looking down at my leg and seeing those guys with their (very) small heads buried in my skin. Its a very, uhmm, unusual sight. Just sitting there, legs spread out for balance, (empty) flat abdomen laying flush against me. With just a glance you could see that this thing was very foreign to my body, not a part of me. It made me want to yell and say "Hey, who said you could help yourself to that? That's my blood!"
POST-SHOWER UPDATE:
No embedded parasites ID-ed, one free-loader on the elastic leg-band of my underwear. (just a wee too bit close for comfort.) Attempted to neutralize with tweezers. Crippled but was not able to easily terminate (How do they do that?!) Total tick count for the day: five, all mine. Next time, I'm shaving my legs are wearing pants.
Something I never dealt with back where I grew up, though, were ticks. I was in the Boy Scouts during my middle and high school years and we talked of ticks often. In fact, one of the hottest Boy Scout debates (at least in our troop) was the best way to deal with ticks. The common cures ranged from the much maligned gentle tweezer pull (But if their heads break off, it'll get infected!) to the hot burnt-out match to using vegetable oil at the bite location to suffocate them. Though the debates were fierce at times the vegetable oil trick seemed to usually win out in the end as it seemed the least invasive. The funny part about all of this is the fact that NONE of us had EVER seen a tick in person. It may have been the weather forcing us into long-pants for most of our camping trips or maybe there just aren't as many ticks up there; it doesn't matter, we were all blithely ignorant.
As of today, I have now passed this adolescent stage and have begun my adult life when it comes to ticks.
Being male and not having the social pressure to shave my legs, I tend to let the hair on my legs grow out. From what I've noticed, this is common among most men (exceptions that come to mind are hard-core bicycle racers and swimmers). Well, today that came back to bite me, literally, thanks to wearing shorts on this approximately twelve mile hike through the prairie.
On our way back to Wichita, I noticed a small insect that looked like a proportionally-challenged spider crawling around on my legs. I let it crawl onto my finger and then tried to kill it by squishing it against the dashboard of my car. Well, things didn't work out so well and the little guy ended up in Katie's seat. Note to self: Katie is not a big fan of insects. She ID-ed the guy as a tick when it landed in her lap but wasn't able to finish what I started due to her somewhat excited state. He escaped somewhere on her side of the car and I volunteered to take the next exit so we could hunt him down.
We never found him but decided it would be a good idea to look ourselves over to make sure we were clean. (This was probably the first time in my life I was verbally encouraged to intently study a woman's legs.) Katie was tick free but, I, on the other hand was not. We found two of those guys buried in my legs. TWO.
The Boy Scout training evaporated from my brain; I wanted those little buggers out now! Let me tell you, if you've ever tried pulling a tick off a non-smooth surface, you know how hard it can be. It took me a few minutes to finally wrest one of them from my thigh; Katie got the other one in just a few seconds. As I found out, though, the only thing harder than getting the tick out is killing it. Without any of my blood in them, ticks are very thin and flat and even trying to crush this one between my thumb and index finger did not succeed in killing it. I tried this on a fourth tick I found while driving home; he made the same mistake the first one did and just crawled onto my finger looking for blood. I didn't look back and simply mashed him against my thumb for fifteen seconds before flicking him onto the dash (and not onto Katie's lap). He was still moving around, trying to get off his back! How do they do that? Again, Katie came to the rescue by picking him up with a tissue and throwing him out the window.
I'm about to go take a shower and give my whole body one more check but before I go, let me say this: probably the most unique experience in all of this adventure is looking down at my leg and seeing those guys with their (very) small heads buried in my skin. Its a very, uhmm, unusual sight. Just sitting there, legs spread out for balance, (empty) flat abdomen laying flush against me. With just a glance you could see that this thing was very foreign to my body, not a part of me. It made me want to yell and say "Hey, who said you could help yourself to that? That's my blood!"
POST-SHOWER UPDATE:
No embedded parasites ID-ed, one free-loader on the elastic leg-band of my underwear. (just a wee too bit close for comfort.) Attempted to neutralize with tweezers. Crippled but was not able to easily terminate (How do they do that?!) Total tick count for the day: five, all mine. Next time, I'm shaving my legs are wearing pants.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Move to Wichita
As many of you probably know, about four months ago I made a big change in my life and moved to Wichita, KS from Boise, ID. The change was prompted by year-and-a-half, long-distance romance with a fine young lady living down here in Wichita. We both desired to advance the relationship to a point where plane rides were not required to see each other; we're kind of weird like that. Both of us had been working on getting jobs for a while (she in Boise, I in Wichita) but I was the one that landed an interview around Thanksgiving 2004. When a job offer materialized, the choice was clear to me and I took the it without much second-guessing. Katie and I had been working towards this goal for so long and now the end was in sight.
Moves are hard for me, though. My move to Boise straight out of college was much more difficult than I had expected and I ended up with a significant but not frequently crippling case of depression (self- and peer-diagnosed). Being more introverted, it takes a lot of time and energy to form new relationships, making moves (and sometimes changes in general) large emotional burdens. I guessed that moving to Wichita would probably not be as difficult as the move to Boise but I had no hopes of it being a natural adjustment. I figured that having one key relationship already in place and being more aware of how I struggle in moves would make this one easier than the last but far from a cake-walk.
I was right.
The toughest part of this transition, though, came in realizing just how much I had given up to make this move. Or, more specifically, how much I had worked to form relationships in Boise that were just now coming to fruition. I had been putting diligent effort for quite a while into find ing my place in Boise and after years (literally) of struggling with it, I finally felt like I was making some progress. In short, I felt I had been making some long-term investments and they were just now paying off. To be specific:
Teaching the 11th grade Sunday school class at church. Just a few months before I left an opportunity had been presented for me to start teaching the 11th graders. This was great in so many ways: I got to take part in the teacher training which was, far and away, the best small group of which I have ever been a part. I knew all the 11th graders pretty well and they are a fun group to be around. I had an opportunity to use a somewhat latent skill I have always wanted to develop. All around, this was a very good thing.
The Triumvirate was just forming. By this I mean some of the coolest and most unique social activities with two people I greatly respect: Ken and Caroline. These two and been interning at church for the past several summers but due to their busy schedules during those times, we hadn't had much time to hang out together. Almost by accident, we started spending time together on a weekly basis and it turned out to be one of the highlights of my week. We three thought in a pretty similar way and enjoyed many of the same things. We were all at the same stage in life, still trying to figure out where we were headed. Both, I miss those two.
New group at church. Two very cool people, Mark and Jenny, were just back from China and, using their exceptional people skills, were in the midst of forming a group of younger single people. The church (in the most general sense of the word) seems to have a hard time knowing what to do with single people. This makes a lot of sense; it is a family-oriented institution and people without families don't easily fit into its structure. I had made feeble attempts to get a group going to deal with this problem. Let's just say that Mark and Jenny were able to succeed where I couldn't. All-around high-fives to them, too bad I was literally on my way out the door as it was happening.
African ministry partner. Continuing on the list of gifted and all around great people I had been spending time with, Kelly and I had been working for a number of months to find a ministry in Africa with which to partner. (Truth be told, Kelly was doing most of the work and I was doing my best to provide feedback and keep her encouraged in the endeavor). We found one and just a few weeks before I hopped in my car to drive to Wichita, the founder of the ministry visited our church to further explore this opportunity. Well, as of the time of this writing, things are looking very promising. Kelly has arranged a large number of child sponsorships and already spent a month over in Rwanda (where the ministry is based). My heart for social justice and a desire to make Christ known in practical ways could not have found a better outlet.
I don't list these all so as to solicit pity from others. I list these to make a point: my move was either one of those grand bits of Divine Timing or I have made a very big mistake. I'm not exaggerating when I say that all of these things had come together just in the past few months prior to my departure. This is when God provides the job and the opportunity to be with Katie. For a long time, Sunday mornings here in Wichita were pretty depressing. I would go to this new church and sit around all these new people and all I wanted was to be in a comfortable environment again, one where I knew others and was known. This I had finally achieved back in Boise but Boise was no longer my home.
I choose to believe that God knew what he was doing when he provided this job for me in Wichita. Though I long to be back in Boise, this is where my life is now.
Moves are hard for me, though. My move to Boise straight out of college was much more difficult than I had expected and I ended up with a significant but not frequently crippling case of depression (self- and peer-diagnosed). Being more introverted, it takes a lot of time and energy to form new relationships, making moves (and sometimes changes in general) large emotional burdens. I guessed that moving to Wichita would probably not be as difficult as the move to Boise but I had no hopes of it being a natural adjustment. I figured that having one key relationship already in place and being more aware of how I struggle in moves would make this one easier than the last but far from a cake-walk.
I was right.
The toughest part of this transition, though, came in realizing just how much I had given up to make this move. Or, more specifically, how much I had worked to form relationships in Boise that were just now coming to fruition. I had been putting diligent effort for quite a while into find ing my place in Boise and after years (literally) of struggling with it, I finally felt like I was making some progress. In short, I felt I had been making some long-term investments and they were just now paying off. To be specific:
Teaching the 11th grade Sunday school class at church. Just a few months before I left an opportunity had been presented for me to start teaching the 11th graders. This was great in so many ways: I got to take part in the teacher training which was, far and away, the best small group of which I have ever been a part. I knew all the 11th graders pretty well and they are a fun group to be around. I had an opportunity to use a somewhat latent skill I have always wanted to develop. All around, this was a very good thing.
The Triumvirate was just forming. By this I mean some of the coolest and most unique social activities with two people I greatly respect: Ken and Caroline. These two and been interning at church for the past several summers but due to their busy schedules during those times, we hadn't had much time to hang out together. Almost by accident, we started spending time together on a weekly basis and it turned out to be one of the highlights of my week. We three thought in a pretty similar way and enjoyed many of the same things. We were all at the same stage in life, still trying to figure out where we were headed. Both, I miss those two.
New group at church. Two very cool people, Mark and Jenny, were just back from China and, using their exceptional people skills, were in the midst of forming a group of younger single people. The church (in the most general sense of the word) seems to have a hard time knowing what to do with single people. This makes a lot of sense; it is a family-oriented institution and people without families don't easily fit into its structure. I had made feeble attempts to get a group going to deal with this problem. Let's just say that Mark and Jenny were able to succeed where I couldn't. All-around high-fives to them, too bad I was literally on my way out the door as it was happening.
African ministry partner. Continuing on the list of gifted and all around great people I had been spending time with, Kelly and I had been working for a number of months to find a ministry in Africa with which to partner. (Truth be told, Kelly was doing most of the work and I was doing my best to provide feedback and keep her encouraged in the endeavor). We found one and just a few weeks before I hopped in my car to drive to Wichita, the founder of the ministry visited our church to further explore this opportunity. Well, as of the time of this writing, things are looking very promising. Kelly has arranged a large number of child sponsorships and already spent a month over in Rwanda (where the ministry is based). My heart for social justice and a desire to make Christ known in practical ways could not have found a better outlet.
I don't list these all so as to solicit pity from others. I list these to make a point: my move was either one of those grand bits of Divine Timing or I have made a very big mistake. I'm not exaggerating when I say that all of these things had come together just in the past few months prior to my departure. This is when God provides the job and the opportunity to be with Katie. For a long time, Sunday mornings here in Wichita were pretty depressing. I would go to this new church and sit around all these new people and all I wanted was to be in a comfortable environment again, one where I knew others and was known. This I had finally achieved back in Boise but Boise was no longer my home.
I choose to believe that God knew what he was doing when he provided this job for me in Wichita. Though I long to be back in Boise, this is where my life is now.
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