After busy December, slow January felt quite nice. Temperatures stayed in the pleasant 15-20 degree C range most of the time and so for some of my weekend walks shorts and a t shirt are just right. I resumed my weekly visits to the Spanish (alternating weekly with the French) speaking groups and last week we sat out in the restaurant courtyard until 10 p.m. Not bad for end of January.

Last year at about this time we visited NASA just south of Houston. As I mentioned at the time, it was a great disappointment. First time we went (about 15 years ago) the visit was free (or very inexpensive because I do not remember paying anything) and we were able to walk around the grounds and I was particularly impressed by the big Saturn rocket. When we vent last year on a return visit, it turned out that the visits to NASA have been privatized and this unfortunately resulted in a significantly expensive entrance fee and equally significant dumbing down of the whole experience. More of an overgrown MacDonald’s activity center and the big Saturn rocket was nowhere to be seen. At the time we bought a family pass, which cost almost the same as 4 single admissions, but gave us the right to free parking and unlimited visits for a year.

(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) When I talked about the unfavorable impressions to my friends at work, they pointed out that it is still possible to see the Saturn rocket, but that one has to line up and take a tour. So two days before the one year limit was up and while Alice was still in Houston, we headed back, arriving just as the gates were opening so that we did not have to wait in line too long. There were in fact three different tours of the grounds and we took in two. The first one took us to the control center from which the Space Shuttle missions are run and to the Saturn rocket which is now housed in a large custom made hangar. Apparently exposure to the elements caused substantial deterioration and a major restoration had to take place. Being inside a building, the rocket appeared even larger and more impressive than I remembered it. The building provides more of a sense of scale than the wide open spaces of the coastal plain. The second visit was the large above ground pool which is used to practice space maneuvers in the neutrally buoyant environment simulating the weightlessness of space. At the end, after the second visit, I finally felt we got our money’s worth.