Pacific Science Center and COUSINS

Pacific Science Center (under the Space Needle) has camps for kids.  The counselors had advanced degrees from impressive Universities.  We signed up William for the Amusement Park rides camp.

I was envisioning that they'd ride a roller coaster and make one.  But they did more with other types of rides.  I did feel sorry for them.  They had said, "Tomorrow, you get to make your own ride!"  William made plans to make a Tower of Terror type of ride, and was really disappointed when they made them do a merry-go-round type of one with a small motor.  So, the camp gets a D on creativity, a C for food,  a B on demonstrating real-life physics to children, and an A for counselors.

Every day we had to do the commute downtown.  It wasn't too bad, because we could use the commuter lane.  But coming home at night, getting out of north Seattle was a nightmare.  I finally found a route that was less-time, but not after we spent quality time in a traffic bottle-neck.  I have heard it has gotten worse, and the stations in Seattle have been reporting on it.

Uncle Noel was so cool.  He'd ask William about his day and be so interested.  We'd just gotten home in this pic, and Uncle Noel said, "Come into my office."  He was sitting in the back of the Yoder, having a beer, so up William hopped! 

William LOVES his cousins.  I think he wanted more time with them.  They are all ready to go to an Eagle Scout Court of Honor in this pic.

Aiden and Thayer got William hooked on Mine Craft.  This is the game that never ends...  

William is obsessed with playing in peaceful mode and building all the fun things he can get the basic products for.  At one point, when we just got home, he called Aidan to figure something out.  It was neat to see the cousin connection.

Hong Kong Work Trip

There certainly are worse places to travel for work.  I was pretty excited to travel to Hong Kong where we'd get to spend a few days working on the ship during the day and exploring Hong Kong in the evening.

There are some tall buildings in Hong Kong.  The building on the left is the International Commerce Centre and is the 4th tallest building in the world at 1,588 feet tall with 118 stories.

But, it doesn't stand out much since there are tall buildings everywhere.  I was told that Hong Kong is the most vertical city in the world.

Apparently, you need to do other things to make your building stand out.  Some of the architecture was incredible and the lighting at night was spectacular.  One really felt like you were in the movie Blade Runner... only cleaner and sunnier...

Along with the big and bright, there were the expected Hong Kong street signs.

Had to sample some of the local beer.  Not bad for being served in a plastic cup..

The night market.  Only open at night.  There were quite a few interesting things, but after a while, it all seems the same.

We were lucky that there was a beer and music festival going on that weekend.  Sampled a few more... plastic cups be damned...

One obviously needs to control the weeds growing on the wall.  Look what happens when you ignore them too long.

Found this cool store that sold funky modern art furniture and fixtures.  Too bad it would have been too difficult to transport this stuff home.

 I didn't get a picture of all the scaffolding erected around buildings undergoing maintenance.  For such a modern city, they use an awful lot of bamboo to build the scaffolding.  This van is full of the raw materials for a project.

I suppose I should have expected to see this on the ship.  But it was just a bit of a shock to see the Flag of China displayed next to the US Flag.  Diplomacy.

As we got underway, I toured around the ship.  It is quite different than when we work on the ship in the shipyard.  It's much more put-together and they have the planes on board.  A LOT of planes.  It was sometimes hard to get around because of all the planes.

Sadly, a sailor lost his life when he fell from the ship onto one of the barges servicing the ship.  Soon after we got underway, they transported his remains off the ship via an airplane.  They had a very nice ceremony for the transfer and rang him off with honors.  You can see more of that in the video.

I went back to watch the wake for a while.  They were doing some high power runs for evaluations, so  there was quite the churning mass of water behind the ship.  I was never out in the sun, but got a bit too much sun exposure from the reflected sunlight off the wake.  Snow and water are evil...!

Every so often, a supply ship would pull up along side to top off the carrier's jet fuel supply.  They'd shoot over cables and would then suspend hoses across to pump the fuel over.  They'd also rig ammunition and other supplies via the cables.  Most of the palleted food and supplies were carried over by helicopter.  I now know why they only serve eggs scrambled... You can see some of that in the video.

To make the room for moving all that food and other supplies around the hanger deck below, they "stacked" all the planes on the forward end of the flight deck.

It may seem that all I did was watch the cool stuff.  It's only because I can't take a picture of my work place.  Take my word for it, we worked very hard and deserved our little bit of entertainment of watching flight ops (operations).  The squadron leaders get to have their airplanes painted with decorations.  Here is the Diamondback leader...

Here, the Shadowhawks are in the foreground and I think it is the Mace's launching in the background.  Lots of action on the flight deck.

A Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) flight coming in.  Notice how everyone is standing just outside of the red and white striped line.  That ensures that they are not injured by the arresting wire.  Most are there to ensure the wire is recoiled safely after the plane has landed.

A launch is a powerful thing.

A landing is a skillful one.

The team!

Rock Star

Camp Boyd has a friend, Vic Favier, who William knows to be a ROCK STAR!!!

Sure, some kids look up to Spiderman or football players.  My son wants to know all the minerals and rocks.  So, his ROCK STAR is literally a 'Rock' Star!  We'd done some collecting of rocks, and William got to take them for identification.

William was impressed by the drawers and organization of his collection!

Anytime you get to look through a microscope, it's a good day! 

William loves maps.  Knowing where certain mineral deposits and rocks come from is a very cool part of geology. 

There were some very cool toys.

William ended up getting a rock collection that he loves to show everyone and explains everything in great detail, much to their time detriment.

It gave him something to talk about to his cousin's new wife, who will soon be a degreed geologist.  I think she was kinda jealous of some of his samples.

Many of William's pictures were out of focus.

This one turned out! 

At the end, they decided to use their microscope superpower to look at pond scum.  Now that's a superpower!

We also get to see the different ways to cut rock in the video.

Air and Space Museum

Out in the middle of a field in McMinnville, Oregon is a wonderful Air and Space Museum.

There are two buildings like this.  This holds the Spruce Goose and other planes, and it's twin the space portion.

The 747 is on top of a building near them.  That building hosts a water park!  Much to William's chagrin, we didn't go there.  But I see a return visit in our future! 

The old style planes were fun to look at.  Ford's logo is so cool looking!

This is the plane from a little further out.

And this is the inside.  People complain about leg room nowadays, but boy, howdy!  This one didn't evan leave aisle room!

There are too many pictures of planes that William found interesting. 

This was a free ride in the space building.  How fun!  The person running it said that even though it has a weight limit, they'd even ridden it!  :)  Most of the volunteers are elderly, so you can imagine what it would look like after hours!  Side benefit!

Rocket engines... William was convinced they were going to launch a rocket.  There's a mock-up room and a count-down.  For being bright, he's amazingly gullible!  I guess the spin is that he still has a vivid imagination, and anything is possible!  Or, he's been warped by Disney.

How it would look when the helicopter picked up the capsule after splash-down.

I am currently reading 'Packing for Mars.'  And so I look at this picture differently.  I now know the back-story on us putting a flag on the moon! 

The true ATV.

I love these tags!

We had a super time at the museum, and the side-note is that the sandwiches were really good there.  The bread was thick, yet nummy!  (It's always about the food!)