Mardi Gras & NASA Space Center

Sun., Feb. 9th – Sun., Feb. 15th, 2020

Least you think it’s all rainbows and unicorns, this week we did have the usual chores of laundry, grocery shopping, and paying bills. Plus in our case additional “chores” are planning future travel and making reservations. That’s what we call a fun chore.

Another chore we tackled this week was connecting with a new primary physician. Since Texas is now our new “domicile” even if it’s a transient one, this is where we have to set up new doctors etc. We had scheduled a doctor’s visit for Wednesday in Livingston, which is where the national headquarters for Escapees is located, that’s a company with a broad support network for RVers. It’s also where we get our mail. Since Livingston is a 2+ hour drive, we wanted to make the most of the outing so we also scheduled with an estate planner. The last time we did our Wills was back in the mid-80’s. It’s more than time for new ones. 

The visit with the new primary physician went fine. The most traumatic part of that visit was finding out what I weigh. Ugh. She left us with a variety of referral forms… including optometrist, dentist, dermatologist and orders for bloodwork for the two of us. We’ll have future doc appointments to set up over the next 6 weeks we’re in the Galveston area. 

On the same day we also visited with an attorney who is an Estate Planner. She is headquartered at Escapees in Livingston so is familiar with the unique set-up of this lifestyle. She was great and we left with a 17-page document to fill out and send back. This will be a process. 

We managed to have some fun this week, too. We did a nice walk on the beach across from the state park. Saw some beautiful and unusual homes! And, for Valentine’s we visited a local meat market that Carey and Denis had recommended and Gary grilled filet mignon that night. We enjoyed that with mushrooms, a salad and sweet potato. Delicious and we didn’t have to deal with restaurant crowds. 

On Friday the official start to Mardi Gras began in Galveston, which boasts the third largest Mardi Gras celebration in the country and it runs for almost two weeks. Dear friends of ours, Meigs & Paul, who now live in San Marcos, TX had contacted us back in January with a “save the date” call. They booked reservations for Saturday night at FishTales, a restaurant on the Seawall, to enjoy a balcony party complete with beads to throw, dinner, music and a front row seat to the Krewe of Gambrinus Parade with 13 lighted floats and marching bands. We were so looking forward to going with them. Unfortunately, they texted us Thursday morning with a picture of Meigs with black eyes. She had taken a tumble off her scooter the day before and smacked her head into their tile floor. (She’s recovering from ankle replacement surgery and using a scooter to get around temporarily.) She was sore everywhere and they had to cancel. The tickets were non-refundable so they gifted all four to us and said have fun. It was beyond generous! We contacted Carey and Denis and thankfully they were free that evening. But they had tickets in the afternoon to attend a talk at the Bryan Museum by an astronaut, Mike Fossum. Luckily we were able to get tickets as well so we made a day of it. They picked us up and we headed to the museum to hear him speak. 

NASA Astronaut Colonel Mike Fossum (coincidentally he’s the same age as Gary and I) talked about being 11 years old and watching the 1963 Apollo 11 moon landing which started his dream of becoming an astronaut. (I can remember that same Apollo 11 moon landing… my mom calling me in from playing outside saying “you have to see this.” Afterwards, I remember saying “can I go back outside and play now?” Obviously it didn’t impact me the same way.) Col. Fossum went on to become an engineer and joined the air force. He tried 7 times to become an astronaut candidate before he was finally selected. He was on two space flights and then trained for an additional 2 1/2 years (including learning Russian) to prepare for a 6 month stint at the International Space Station. He’s logged more than 194 days in space and has done 7 spacewalks. He taught himself how to take low light photography to try and capture with a camera the images he could see with the naked eye. Fascinating. He gave a great lecture. 

Afterwards it was Mardi Gras time! We arrived at FishTales with a cold wind blowing! We sat outside… at first…. but the buffet dinner was set up inside so after the first round of food and drinks, we quickly moved inside to finish dinner where it was warmer. Then moved back outside to enjoy throwing beads off the balcony. I didn’t realize throwing beads was a thing… it most definitely is a thing! We were each given a big bag of beads (approx 14” high by 8” wide by 5” deep) packed with beads to throw to the throngs below. Some kids were so weighted down with beads that their necks had to hurt. 

One blatant individual had a stroller with a supposed baby onboard, which turned out to be a doll, just to get people to throw beads to him. Have to say this was a very fun way to kill time before the parade started. We stood at the balcony and staked out our space. A big guy was trying to edge Carey out but she held her ground. You go girl! Denis was “feeding” us the beads to throw, which was very helpful since I initially made a complete mess of opening up the packages to get at the beads. There’s a whole right way to do this. Who knew! 

Finally we saw the floats making their way down the seawall. It was quite a sight with the floats lit up at night, the lights from historic Pleasure Pier, and the dark majesty of the ocean within view. Area towns were all represented between the marching bands and local fire and police vehicles also in the parade. 

A night that will live in our memory for a very long time. This was one of over 30 parades that happen in Galveston over a two week period culminating with the final parade on Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. We thoroughly enjoyed this amazing opportunity to take in Mardi Gras with style! A heartfelt thank you to Meigs & Paul. 

On Sunday, the day after the parade, we headed to the NASA Space Center outside of Houston. It seemed a fitting thing to do after hearing Mike Fossum speak the day before. One of the more striking exhibits at Space Center is a full scale, accurate representation of a shuttle called “Independence” mounted on the original NASA 905 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA). You can actually walk inside both of them. Some facts: 852 total crew members served on 135 shuttle missions (some individuals serving multiple times), total days shuttle astronauts spent in space: 1,323; total miles traveled by space shuttles: 542,398,878 (equivalent to 21,030 earth orbits or put another way, more than enough miles to reach Jupiter). The Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011. 

Other favorite exhibits of ours included “the typical day for an astronaut on the space shuttle” and the progress we’re making towards getting to Mars. The U.S. has actually landed numerous unmanned space craft on Mars. The trick is to land a human on Mars and have him/her safely return… it will be a multi-year flight which entails issues of enough food, water and not going coo-coo, among other things. Strides are being made and there’s even hope that by the mid 2020’s a manned crew could land on Mars. We’ll see… 

In the meantime, closer to present day, both SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos) are looking to ferry people around the Earth in their respective crafts within the next year or two… for a price, of course.  It also seems that by the end of this year the US will be able to send astronauts back into space via rockets made by Boeing or SpaceX, currently we rely solely on the Russians and their Soyuz Spacecraft to transport people to the International Space Station.

One of the last things we did at the Space Center was take the tram tour around the grounds and visit the recently restored Apollo Mission Control Center which features the authentic consoles and display screens used by flight controllers to monitor nine Gemini, all Apollo Moon missions and 21 space shuttle missions. The restoration is complete with notebooks, papers ash trays, and coffee cups scattered on the consoles. Even the viewing area is authentic where families of the astronauts would sit behind glass and observe the happenings without disrupting the activities. Today that’s where we sat and heard conversations between the astronauts and the controllers on July 20, 1969 when they were landing on the moon and Neil Armstrong was taking his first steps. A truly unique experience and a chance to marvel at what we humans can accomplish. 

A memorable weekend between Mardi Gras and the NASA Space Center.