Would you like to dance around the world with me?

California Adventures

I am going to take us on another flashback to 2002, when I spent six months in California.
I got a co-op job at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA for the summer and fall of 2002. While normal co-op rotations are only three months long, JPL thought our first stint out there should be six months because of the "rigorous" work. As you will soon find out, this rigorous work entailed playing with optics and traveling to Hawaii for work. Oh shucks.
Lindsay and I lived together in the heart of Pasadena over the summer. I think we learned too much about one another and had too much fun at the same time. I never realized how pleasing our Saturday ritual would be: wake up around 10, get some Jamba Juice (only the best smoothies in the world), head to the beach for the day with the boys, play volleyball, come back and order a Big Papa (a monstrous 36" pizza), and eat and drink beer with the boys for the rest of the night. Such a hard life. If only JPL were closer to the beach and we could have gone on our lunch breaks.


While at JPL, I still kept up with the college scene thanks to Lindsay at Claremont. Her school loves to sponsor parties and get their students drunk. Why? I have no idea. But sometimes I definitely wish I went to a private school. Except for all the debts I would then have. But warm weather led to small, low-cut shirts, and her homecoming gambling night led to me in a sparkly, partially see-through dress and how shall we say it - better friends? That's for Lindsay and I to laugh at only. But a hardy laugh it is. When I wasn't there in the spring, people at her school wondered where I had gone and why I wasn't at school anymore - they thought I went to her school because I was there so often. If only they had Aerospace Engineering...



Other cool things I did was visit Stanford and San Francisco to visit our friend Sean, took a weekend trip with my dad and uncle to the Sequoia National Forest and along the coast, and then toured the southern states with my dad on the trip back, all of which were tons of fun. And the Jimmy even hit 100,000 miles at the Grand Canyon.

But let me not forget the coolest part! At JPL, the project I worked on was a set of telescopes located in Hawaii. It just so happened that they needed an extra hand and that I could test out some of my programs by GOING OUT THERE. So we went to Hawaii for a week, all paid for my JPL. Granted we worked 10-11 hour days, but still! We got to go to the Volcano National Park, snorkeling, hiking, shopping, and swimming at a black sand beach. I wish I had more of my pictures digitalized, but here is the sunset over the Keck Telescopes, on the top of Mauna Kea, at 14,000 feet. Gorgeous. :-)

posted by Biff @ 6:43 PM