Category: Texas

Houston, Days 2 and 3

SDSpivey
747 that carried the shuttle back to Florida

We went for breakfast, then headed down to Johnson Space Center.

It was just 35 minutes down I-45, but the directions were for the employee entrance. Apparently this happens a lot, the guard simply gave us directions and we U-turned.

As we drove up, we could see the 747 that carried the shuttles back to Florida, and it had a shuttle mock-up, the Independence, built in Apopka. The shuttle is a “fake”, but was built to the NASA blueprints and is now owned by NASA, so I suppose it is “real” now. They only built 6 shuttles and 2 are now gone, so a mock-up is as close as we can expect.

I was amazed how small it really is, a good hallway length, but only as wide as the 747 it rides. The boosters and external tank make up the bulk of the assembly.

The black tiles at the nose all have dot-matrix numbers on them. I presume these are tracking numbers, if a tile is lost, then a new one can be made that will fit precisely. Most of the black tiles are not rectangular.

After browsing a bit, we took a tram around the complex and to Rocket Park. The park a little bit disappointing as it only had 3 rockets, but one was the Saturn V, just about the largest thing ever flown. It is over 360 feet long, more than a football field, including the end zones. My car could have easily fit inside one of the rocket cones, while the Command Module had less room than a Smart Fortwo car.

We walked above the training lab, where we could see some of the robots they are developing.

They also have a local school’s Ag class’ cattle, Texas long horns, of course. They have horns about 4 feet long. Long indeed.

Another tram took us to the original Control Center, showing original mission footage of the first moon landing. One screen showed a chart with a X and Y lines and circles indicating distance, with a paper Command Module in the center. A hand then pushes another cut out indicating the field of view of the camera, then as the astronauts exit the ship, cut outs of them are placed on the chart and later moved around manually. Ah, the high tech of the late 60’s.

It began raining lightly prior to the second tram, so when we hear they were closing soon, we were not as disappointed as we could have been.

After returning to town, it was too late to go anywhere else, especially in the rain. No zoo or parks for us.

We went out for dinner and to bed early, Mom had a 9am flight and I had a 15 hour drive home.

After dropping Mom off at the airport, I drove to the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences.

I did not expect too many people at 9am on a Tuesday, but there were several school buses and a lot of kids inside. With Houston being the 4th largest city in the US, I suppose they have field trips just about every weekday, during the school year.

They had a 3-story, 2-ton pendulum swinging, showing the precession that occurs through the 24-hour rotation of the planet, every 10 minutes a small block on each side would be knocked over, making the whole thing a half-daily clock.

I decided it would be easier to take the elevator up to the 4th floor and work down, letting gravity work for me and avoiding most of the kids.

The 4th floor was all about oil drilling and fracking, it is an oil state after all. They had a “ride” where you were shrunk down to Hot Wheels size and flew down a drilled hole, experiencing what went on during the fracking process. The 360 view was not bad and the whole thing was a little interesting. Fortunately, they did return us to our original size. It would’ve been real hard to drive home otherwise.

There was an Egyptian exhibit, but after seeing the real King Tut, at Highclere Castle, it didn’t appeal to me.

I browsed a mollusk shell collection, but it was a bit repetitive, pretty but not enough variation. I passed the obligatory dinosaur bones and fossils.

Aurora Butterfly of Peace under normal light
Aurora Butterfly of Peace under florescent light

There was a mineral collection. So many colors and shapes of crystals. They were so vibrant, but I couldn’t capture their beauty on camera. Near the entrance is the Aurora Butterfly of Peace, a butterfly shape with 240 naturally colored diamonds, which fluoresced . I didn’t take a photo initially, so I returned as was leaving. A lady and girl were looking at it, she lifted the girl to see better and the girl noticed right away that the center diamond was shaped like a heart. Good eyes.

The collection also included Fabergé eggs and jewelry from the Russian Imperial household of Tsar Nicholas II.

Dik-diks

I had always presumed Fabergé was a Frenchman, but was from St. Petersburg, Russia. According to the film playing, Fabergé only made a few of the objects, most were designed and created by his employees. Much like Steve Jobs taking credit for the design of the early Apple computers, when he had no electronics knowledge or training.

If our visas come in, perhaps we will be able to see more Fabergé in St. Petersburg. Update: I did.

They had preserved animals from Africa, including what I consider to be the cutest deer, a dik-dik. It stands 12-15 inches tall. I think these would sell well in the US, but hard to raise as they need about 6 acres each.

The Art of The Brick was on display. An artist created pieces wholly out of Lego, including some recreated famous paintings and a T-rex skeleton.

When I was about 10, we drove around the southeast states in my dad’s schoolbus yellow pick-up truck with camper-top. One morning we stopped at the battleship USS Alabama in Mobile bay. What boy doesn’t want to check out a battleship?

I don’t know why, but we didn’t tour the ship. Too early? Too expensive? I the past decade, I have passed it 6 times, without being able to stop and tour. It is always too late.

I determined that if I left Houston before 11:30am, I might get there before closing at 6.

I left the museum just after 10, but I didn’t get to Mobile until 7pm. AHHHH, will I ever get to see it? At about 7 hours from here, I really don’t see it coming to be.

After leaving, I drove home. Both directions, I was able to cross Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana without stopping. Prius, Whooo!

I wasn’t sleepy until after I went through Perry, FL, on US19. I had just finished all my podcasts and an audiobook, so nothing but music to keep me alert. It was only a few more hours to get home, so I pushed on. There is a riverside park in Fanning Springs, so I did decide to stop there and crash out for a few, but as I pulled up, they now have a gate across the parking lot. No luck there either.

I really didn’t want to park on the side of the road, there isn’t much room between asphalt and ditch. So I had to continue. Only a little more than an hour away and almost no one on the highway.

Coincidences: Tuesday night, I went to YouTube and in my subscribed list, there was a video about Russia’s/Belarus’ name and another with the Hiho kids trying “astronaut food”.

After getting home, I had several podcasts or TV shows talk about or mention Johnson Center, the Saturn V rocket, the Lego exhibit, or the 747 shuttle plane.

I had 3 different Uber passengers who had taken a cruise to St. Petersburg. I had mentioned my trip many times before this week.

Saturday was the anniversary of the Columbia breaking up over Texas.

I’m sure these are just a case of overly noticing, like when you get a new car and suddenly that same model is everywhere.

Not a coincidence, but I have noticed more Texas tags in Orlando than Georgian, but I’m sure that’s due to population differences, than to closeness. I also see more NY tags, snow birds.

 

 

Houston, Texas

SDSpivey

Mom and I are meeting in the largest city of Texas, today. We are here to apply for travel visas for an upcoming trip in June, to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Originally, we were going to fly and meet up at the airport, then go to our AirBNB before hitting the consulate to apply for the visa.

A slight snag was found, we would arrive around 9am, but couldn’t check in until 3pm. Also, I found that an Uber from the airport into town was about $30, each way. Ah, a solution, I can rent a car. Then we have somewhere to stow our stuff while we’re at the consulate and give us a bit more freedom traveling around the city. So, I placed an order for a rental car, $140 for the three days we’d be here.

A few days ago, I was thinking (a dangerous thing, I know). I was going to be paying $30 to park my car at Orlando airport, plus the rental. It would only cost me about $100 in gas to drive to Houston and back. I really didn’t want to put that many miles on the car nor drive that many hours, but I just spent more than a week laying in bed sick. So I needed to reduce my spending a bit, plus I had over 30 hours of podcasts accumulated since I wasn’t in the car listening.

I canceled the rental car, but my flight was non-refundable, so I just had to eat that.

I left out from home on Sunday evening and turned on the Uber app with a destination of Pensacola. That served multiple points; I would only get requests going in the right direction, any trips were extra money, and I had plenty of time and distance so pickups would help break up the trip. I am only able to Uber in Florida, so Pensacola is the furthest destination I could do anyway.

Driving up US19, I saw an orange light up ahead. My thought was “that’s weird, it looks like fire.” As I got nearer, I could tell it was a fire, a decent sized one too, but why would someone have a fire that close to the road? As I approached, I could see that it was a truck on fire. The back end was almost on the ground, either the axle melted or it was lost somehow, causing the fire. Passing, I could feel the heat all the way across 4 lanes and a wide median.

There were already plenty of people there, so I didn’t bother reporting it. I’m sure someone already had. Still, I didn’t see any police officers until I was past Tallahassee, then I saw a lot. They are rampant on that part of I-10.

I had a plan to jump up and travel through Alabama a little, capturing a few counties I haven’t visited before, I did have plenty of time after all. But just as I was contemplating that, I did get an Uber request. I saw that it was a 78-minute trip south west. What? That would put us into the Gulf.

Nevertheless, I proceeded to the exit, and pulled into the parking lot of a small combo Burger King and convenience store. Strangely, I had been to this store before. I had previously picked up a man in Panama City Beach and taken him to the Merritt Island area and he had wanted to stop to get a drink or snack, I just picked that exit because it was the next one after he asked to stop somewhere. Out of all the exits on I-10, that just happened to be the one I picked.

The passengers, a truck driver and wife, got in and I saw the route was going south west down some back roads, but not into the Gulf, thankfully.

I took about an hour and 20 minutes to drop them off. I headed back towards the interstate, that took a while to go through the small roads back the the highway. I did a quick google map and saw that I was about 10 hours until I would arrive at Houston airport, where I needed to pick up Mom at 9am.

But my diversion cost me a bit of time and now I had to haul ass to get there.

I was pulling into Houston just as the sky was getting light, meaning I left in the daylight and now it was daylight again. I literally drove all night.

My plan was to get to the airport then crash out for an hour or so, but I had not accounted for morning traffic. I arrived at the airport at 7:40. I checked my flight tracking app, her flight was early, now scheduled for 8:30. Oh well, no nap for me. I went ahead and parked and went in to wait for her.

I found her and we went to find food. It was still early so many places were not open yet, but we found a Whataburger and ate in. Pretty good food, but also I was hungry.

We then headed to the Russian consulate. It was in an office building. The security guard took our information and printed out passes for us and instructed us on the elevator. We had to select the floor we wanted from the panel that then told us which elevator to use, there was no control inside, it would only got to the floor already selected.

The consulate office had a few people in it, but not too many. The agent informed us that we since didn’t have an appointment, we had to go to a different branch, but he went over our applications first, Mom needed another previous job to be listed, already had 20 years, but that wasn’t enough. I had my computer so I could have made the changes he wanted, but I had no internet yet and certainly had no printer, so we would have to pay extra for the visa agent to make the changes.

The other office was only down the street a bit, so no big deal. We went in and were able to see the agent right away. She took our applications and re-entered them into her system, asking a few questions along the way.

Total was $608, for both of us. That’s as much as 3 weeks of AirBNB in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There was a $28.83 charge for photocopy. We didn’t need a photocopy and she only copied my passport, not Mom’s.

Unfortunately, the approval process would take about a week, so we opted for the return by mail. I was not going to drive all the way back just to pick them up.

Since we were not getting them while we are here, we really don’t need to stay 2 more days, but Mom’s flight home can’t be changed and I’m too tired to drive home anyway, so we are going to stay.

The visa application took a while, so it was almost time for us to check into the AirBNB, but the app was giving me problems, I couldn’t load the check-in instructions. I was able to send a text to our hostess, and we got in and we both crashed out for a couple hours.

Originally, I had hoped the approval would only take a day or two, then we could book our flights to Russia, but we don’t want to buy a ticket if we can’t go, we have to wait.

It is a bit strange, we are having to do things in the wrong order. We have our rooms booked and now our visas applied for, but still have no flights. Normally, you’d book the flight and then rooms and then any visa you might need. Most country’s visas are not this difficult to get.