Day 4 (2018) - Houston, We Have a (Rain) Problem

Today was NASA day. When we woke up we looked at the weather forecast and it said a high of 65. Sounds good, no? No. More on that later. We started out with a deluxe breakfast at the Embassy Suites and then headed about a half hour to NASA and arrived there around 10am. It was already drizzling a little, and the wind was picking up. I went to the ticket booth to get our tickets and asked about the family membership package, as it seemed like that was a good deal. But the lady in the booth convinced me (or bullied me) that it was better to just get single tickets for everyone, so that's what we did.

We went inside and headed for the tram tours, as that seemed to be the popular thing to do. There are two versions of the tram tour - one that goes to the Mission Control building and the other that goes to the astronaut training building. The Mission Control line was 30 minutes and the training center line was 90 minutes, so we headed for the former. But we also learned that members have their own line that gets you to the front of the line. After waiting in line for a while, we decided to see about upgrading and Debbie went out to the info center to check out the story. Basically, for about $30 we could upgrade, so we did. We are now proud members of the Johnson Space Center (for a year). Since we were already near the front of the line at this point we just stayed where we were and got on the next tram. The trams are open on the sides, and they make two worrisome announcements before leaving - first, if it rains you are likely to get wet and second, there are no bathrooms on the route until the end. Not sure which was more concerning to me.

At this point, the tram ride was simply cold, as it wasn't raining. We drove by a bunch of buildings and our tour guide gave some interesting facts about space travel, like how the spines of astronauts can grow 6 inches while in space. The tour guide spoke too fast, and in a monotone style and I think had the mic too close to her mouth. Other than that she was great (sarcasm). We stopped for 15 minutes at Mission Control where we got off the tram and went up to a viewing area where we learned about how Mission Control works.

We got back on the tram and headed to the building where an old, unused Saturn rocket is housed. This rocket was to be used on the Apollo 18 mission, which never happened once they scrapped the moon missions in the early 1970s.

Anyone need a rocket?

After walking around the rocket for a while we headed back to the tram for the ride back to the main building. At this point the weather was looking more ominous, so we decided to have a little snack and head to the second tram tour before it got too bad out. And this time we used the members-only line to get to the front of the line, which had now grown to a 2-hour wait. The joke of it is that no one actually looked at our ticket to make sure we were actual members. In reality, anyone could have just gone into the member line, but we were legit.

The second tour guide was much better, she had pep, made some jokes, spoke clearly and also imparted some facts about space travel - like how the spines of astronauts can grow 3 inches while in space.

After getting off of the tram and checking out the training center, we returned the tram. At this point, the weather had gone from ominous to lousy, with strong misty rain and COLD wind. Remember how they said that if it rained we might get wet? They weren't lying. Brian was sitting on one end of the rows of seats and bore the brunt of the rain and was pretty wet by the time we got back to the main building. We were all wet and cold, and Debbie had clearly wasted a lot of time doing her hair in the morning, as by now it was all wet and curly.

Miss Curly Q

She is now the proud owner of a NASA hat.

Amanda is in there somewhere

By now it was close to 2:30 and the gang was hungry (and cranky) and didn't really want to eat NASA food, so we headed to the car to go someplace and eat and possibly come back after to see more. But as we were sitting in the car trying to figure out where to do, we realized the two places I had in mind were either closing at 3 or had already closed. So we decided, reluctantly, to go back in and get NASA food and see some more stuff. We had a scrumptious meal (again, sarcasm) then headed to a presentation on life on the International Space Station, where we learned some interesting facts about space travel - like how the spines of astronauts can grow 2 inches while in space. Yes, three people talked about the same issue with space travel and gave three different measurements for spinal growth. I really hope the math that the actual rocket scientists are doing at NASA are a tad more precise.

The final exhibit that we wanted to see (and at this point in the day by "we" I am excluding any college or high school aged humans in our group) was the jumbo jet that carried the space shuttles from place to place and a mock space shuttle sitting on top of it. We went up the stairs and into the jumbo jet and some of us spent more time than others reading the various exhibits and then went up further to the shuttle.

Photo was taken on the way in,
before everyone was cold, wet and cranky

By 4:15 we had wrapped up, much to the chagrin of the school-aged humans (once more, sarcasm), and headed back to the hotel to rest, warm up and get ready for dinner. Tonight's dinner was a bigger hit than last night's, thanks in no small part to sitting inside and not being freezing. Plus the food (Mexican) at Original Ninfa's was really good. Their steak fajitas were on a list of "must eats" in Houston, so who am I to go against that advice and I ordered that. Brian got ribs (I think from about 7 cows). Amanda got tacos, Ethan had a fajita mix of steak and chicken and Debbie got salmon tacos.

Soup meant for a giant

"Nacho" average nachos...

No, this was not family-style dining

You won't see these at Taco Bell

Happy diners

Everything was really good and WAY too much to eat. The huge portions filled us all up so we skipped dessert tonight (I just can't stop with the sarcasm).

It may be officially called "tres leches cake"
but it should be called "millones de calorías cake"

We finished up at dinner and headed back to the hotel and unfortunately were not able to go for a walk to futilely try and walk off some of dinner due to the weather.

The original plan for tomorrow was to drive to College Station and go to the George HW Bush Presidential Library. But thanks to the government shut down most of the library is closed. So we will be calling an audible and figure out something to do before we head across the street from the hotel and go to the Celtics-Rockets game.