Rebecca’s Journey to the LPSC

As with Pamela, I am able to attend LPSC because it occurs during spring break. It’s not the way most of my classmates will spend their break, as I will neither be dozing in the Sun on a beach nor partying hard. This will be way better - a whole week to geek out about solar system science.

My trip down to Houston was complicated by the fact that I’m currently using crutches to get around - I slipped on some ice last week and sprained my ankle pretty badly (the ER nurses were impressed). Apparently my Canadian-ness is wearing off. I need to spend more time in places that have real winter.

Crutches instantly mean you’re an invalid. This can be beneficial. I didn’t have to walk through large portions of Chicago’s O’Hare airport to get from F9 to C24. I managed to get preferential seating in the bulkhead on both my flights, which gave me more legroom. On the other hand, the folk who push wheelchairs are generally fairly rude and I suddenly became not a human, but an object and a chore.

I was entertained on the longer leg of my trip, from Chicago to Houston. We were flying on a nice, big, 737. The gentleman sitting next to me had just come back from Ethiopia with his wife, their son, and their three newly adopted children (two boys, about 6 and 4, one girl maybe 18 months old). He was, of course, happy to talk about them - but they were all clearly tired. He said they’d been travelling for about 30 hours at that point, and were all thankful to almost be home.

The woman sitting next to him, spent much of the flight editing images in Photoshop (on her MacBook Pro, just like mine) for a powerpoint presentation comparing data collected by Mariner 10 and MESSENGER. Something tells me that she was on that flight for the same reason as me.

I did eventually land in Houston, where Pamela met me. We attempted to find the restaurant where we were to meet Zach (who is always fun). It took us driving past it at least once (but possibly twice) before we finally managed to get to it.

The rest of the evening consisted of a relaxed dinner with friends, and the long drive back to the hotel. We only really got lost once - but it cost $1.50 in toll fees before we figured it out. Toll roads are a new thing to me - we don’t have them where I grew up, outside of Toronto. When I’ve encountered them in Massachusetts, there were always big signs prior to them saying things like “LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL”. There was none of that here.

We got back to the hotel, and after doing banal things like checking my email and going over plans for today with Pamela, I admit that I probably fell asleep before she did (I certainly put my book down and rolled over to go to sleep before she finished and turned out the lights). Hopefully they won’t take away my young-person membership card for it.

Now, I’m sitting in a session on Mars’ topography and other puzzles. We’ll see what I can come up with to report on here.

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