For years now I've had a bucket list goal of visiting all the states in the US. After notching Alabama, number 49 out of 51 in 2016, I remained stuck at 49/51 for several years. (I'm using 51 because I'm counting Washington, D.C. in addition to the well-known count of 50 states in the US.) Last year I reached 50/51 by visiting Louisiana. That left ( Read more... )

Actress Nichelle Nichols passed away this past Saturday, July 30. She was aged 89. She was best known for her role as Lieutenant Uhura in the Star Trek TV series (1966-1969) and several feature films.

In her role as Uhura, Nicols, a black woman, was a trailblazer. Star Trek featured one of the first multi-racial casts on TV. Her kiss with star ( Read more... )

Over the last umpteen years I've flown through Washington-Dulles Airport (IAD) more times than I can remember. Actually I don't have to remember; I have a flight tracking service I use. A quick query there indicates the number is 83. I have flown through IAD 83 times. Anyway, on a good many of those trips I have driven VA highway 28 south from the ( Read more... )

Today actor William Shatner, best known for playing the iconic Captain Kirk in the ground-breaking Star Trek TV series (1966-1969) and 7 subsequent Star Trek movies, travels into space for real. He is a passenger aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard space craft. Traveling alongside him are two paying passengers. Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of ( Read more... )

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On July 20, 1969, humans first touched the surface of the moon. With this 50th anniversary a lot of retrospective stories have been in the news ( Read more... )

Agua Dulce, CA - Thurs, 22 Nov 2018, 2pm

How far would you go for Thanksgiving? We went to... planet Vulcan! Or at least the location in remote Los Angeles County used as the scene for Vulcan in the 2009 Star Trek movie.


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I just caught up on a news flash from earlier this week. According to a paper published in Nature Astronomy last Monday scientists have determined that the upper atmosphere of Uranus is primarily gaseous hydrogen sulfide. That compound is what make human flatus smell foul. In other words, we now know definitively that Uranus is surrounded by a ( Read more... )

Thanksgiving Travelog #17
Washington, DC. Saturday, 26 Nov 2016. 3pm.

Today we met my sister, C., and her family at the National Air & Space Museum in downtown Washington, DC. See Air & Space website and Wikipedia's NASM pageI still remember the fascination that the Air & Space Museum held for me when I was a kid. The epic moon landing (1969) ( Read more... )

Last week I wrote that I have two very strong memories from the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. The first of those memories was of what I was doing when I got the news. The second comes from the day after.

As I mentioned last time, the day of the accident was a teacher inservice day at my school. The next day, Tuesday, we were all ( Read more... )

Last Friday the space shuttle Endeavour flew over the San Francisco Bay as part of the winding down of NASA's iconic space shuttle program. I chatted with an acquaintance at lunch about our memories of the shuttles' 30 year history. For both of us the strongest, most indelible memories were of the Challenger explosion in 1986 ( Read more... )