Sometimes, when you travel a lot, you start to feel like you're living in an airport. This week, for me, that is literally true. I am attending a conference that is taking place in the Westin attached to the Denver International Airport. For three days, the airport is my house, and whenever I desire food or entertainment, I just skitter over there and the airport is my playground.

I have always liked airports. They are simultaneously busy and immaculate, with vaulted ceilings and shining buffed floors. Everyone is in transit, hurrying from one place to another, except for when they're not, and everyone suspends the normal standards of behavior and falls asleep on the floor.

The Denver airport is special because it is my home airport. I remember when it was built. I remember when the state-of-the-art baggage system was shredding people's bags, and when conspiracy theorists blamed it on the spirits of Native Americans over whose graves the airport was rumored to have been built. I have eaten countless times at the Panda Express on the second level. Countless times I have ridden the escalator up from the trains to greet my waiting family, usually wearing silly hats. It feels both strange and comfortable to be living there now.

The airport is full of memories. Leaving for Semester at Sea. Leaving to move to France. I remember as a child walking down the concourse and seeing in red letters above the gates all of the exotic cities that one could visit: Chicago. Los Angeles. New York. Miami. Twenty-five years later, and I've been to all of those places.

Last night my plane touched down at midnight. I checked in at the hotel and then spent the entire night working in the ultra-modern lobby, looking out at the airport, which never sleeps. I went to sleep at 6 am but had to be back in action at 8:30. The airport has everything you need, at any hour you might need it.

Tonight I ate some more Panda Express and found a spot to read on the mezzanine overlooking the exit to the trains. Tired as I was, the busy airport breathed life into me, and I read several chapters of my book about the Moon. I like to read about the Moon.


It's one place I haven't been yet.

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I watched "500 Days of Summer" on the plane to Ethiopia. It is basically the saddest movie ever made. It is sad because you spend the whole movie thinking about how you are Tom, whilst we not even recognizing that you are Summer to someone else.


As the plane descended towards Addis Abbaba, my constant companion, the Moon, set over the horizon, followed by the hunter, Orion. The plane made a broad sweep and I came face to face with the Southern Cross.

The first person I meet in Addis Abbaba is a dark-skinned older woman on her way to Juba, the capital of South Sudan. She is yelling after an airport employee, who doesn't hear her. "People aren't helpful here," she says, "in the United States they woukd stop." Soon after a tall, young handsome toffee-skinned man arrives and helps us navigate to the bus between terminals. He was originally born in Somalia but his parents now live in Ethiopia. He is headed to Jigjiga to see them. His children live in Nairobi, Kenya, and he lives in San Diego. It is very expensive, trips like this, but he must do them. As soon as we have settled down to wait for the terminal bus, an elderly Ethiopian woman appears in the company of an airport employee. Her name is Alga. "People are so nice here," she says to me by way of introduction. "I didn't know where to go and so this nice man went out of his way to accompany me to the bus stop. Everyone in Ethiopia is kind like that-- you will see, my daughter." She is originally from Ethiopia, but now she lives in Minnesota with her white American husband and children. They met during the Vietnam War, when there were many US servicemen stationed in Ethiopia (of course?).

"People are wonderful," Alga continues. "I am a people person. I always want to be around other people. They are so friendly and loving." I agree. Juba wonders aloud when the bus is going to come, as she has a flight in an hour. Jigjiga says not to worry. "You have plenty of time, m'am."

"What we really need is World Peace," says Alga. "You know, Michael Jackson said, 'It doesn't matter if you're back or white, you know that song?' Well he's right, it doesn't matter." I take advantage of a pause in her speech to heartily agree.

"One time," Alga says, "Someone asked me, 'How do you feel being black when your husband and children are white?' (Her children, she tells me, are as white as I am!) I said, 'It doesn't matter if you are back or white'. And then right afterwards Michael Jackson came out with that song! What do you think of that?"

That is quite a coincidence, I say, implying that maybe it wasn't a coincidence at all.

"I like that song," she said. "Back then it was a bit bad, you know, between black and white, but now it is ok."

"What we really need in order to get World Peace," continues Alga, "is to pray." I agree.

"HEY YOU! HEY MY SON!" she shouts at Jigjiga. "We all need to pray," she says, when he looks up from his phone.

"We were talking about how to get World Peace," I supply by way of context.

"Oh yes! We must all pray! You are right m'am." He replies.

"And the sister over there!" Alga says loudly. "Yes," replies Juba, distractedly. "The people are fine," she says. "The problem is the government!" Jigjiga laughs. "Where is the bus?!?"

"I think she has never traveled before," says Jigjiga says to me confidentially.

"You know what we must do? We must all pray for peace in the world!" continues Alga, clasping her jeweled hands together in prayer. "We all want the same thing, you know. We just want people your age [indicating me and Jigjiga] to grow up to be my age... that's all we want."
"That's why we moved to the US," says Jigjiga. "So that we can live quietly in peace".
"Well, who knows about the US these days," says Alga.
"Of course there are always problems everywhere," says Jigjiga. "But as long as there is a place that respects the rule of law, the people can live in peace, no matter what small things happen."
"You are Somali, aren't you, my son. Where are you going?"
"Jigjiga."
"Where? People live there?"
"Yes, lots of people live there. Everyone lives there. They have a mosque right next to a church. And everyone lives in peace."
"Ethiopians live everywhere," Alga says. "Because..." She sweeps her hand. Communism. Military rule. Civil war. The Diaspora. That's over now, according to Alga. Ethiopia is the safest country in Africa. And the people are honest. And helpful. It isn't like Kenya, where the officials are corrupt and you have to pay bribes for everything. Here it is like the United States. Everyone respects the rule of law. You will see.

When we get to the passport control, everyone brings out their US Passports. Ah. Ethiopian, Somali, South Sudanese. What a gaggle of Americans we are.

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My professional development group threw a big party, and I brought some apple pucker and whipped cream so that I could force people to do shots like we used to do at the track and field parties back in college.

Me: Ok, now sit back in this chair and we will pour the shot and the whipped cream into your mouth.
Guy: Hmm... can I pour the shot into my own mouth?
Me: If I were in college, I would peer pressure you into doing it the 'proper' way, but since I am not in college anymore, I will let you do whatever you want, because you are your own person and should make your own decisions.
Guy: Hmm.... all right then, I'll do it the 'proper' way.


Normally I get drunk about three times a year or less, but in the last week and a half I have been drunk about 5 nights, two of which were "for work". :| Not sure this bodes well for the rest of 2018...

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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One of my friends lives on an island in the Caribbean, where his activities consist of running on volcanoes, surfing, and scuba diving in the sea. He works for M�t�o France studying hurricanes. This year has been a good year in that respect-- though everyone else in the Caribbean might not agree. He is thinking about moving to Tahiti, where his cousin helps out running a tour outfit. His cousin says that he could use my friend's amazing photography skills for the business.

Him: But it would mean that I would have to end my ten-year relationship with research.
Me: But research kind of sucks.
Him: Yes it does! I don't want to kill myself writing papers just to get a job killing myself writing papers.
Me: Wouldn't it be nice to sell people something that they actually wanted, instead of having to beg all the time? If you were showing people the beauty of Tahiti, the people would say, "THANK YOU!! This has been the best day of my life!" And you would say, "Every day if my life is like this."
Him: Exactly!!!
Me: Hmmm... maybe I should move to Tahiti...
Him: Think about it. Tahiti is a direct 8-hour flight from LA.
Me: I will go to work, and while I am slaving away writing grants that will never get funded, I will buy a ticket to your island and rethink my life plan.
Him: Ok :)

Now I am at work, and it's pretty hard not to reconsider my life plan. : /

On the one hand, a life planning Moon missions and Mars colonization (and making good money), but filled with the stress of the rat race and the depressing prospect of living in a shanty house in LA forever; on the other hand moving to Tahiti... maybe becoming an adventure outfitter... or a geology guide... or a destination photographer... or maybe just a novelist. I could even be a freelance scientist, and only work on science when I had grant money. I would probably be pretty poor, depending on how my schemes panned out, but most of my activities on the island would be free!

And if it didn't work out, I could probably come crawling back to NASA.

#hmmmm

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I asked my email list at work if anyone knew where I could find some lunar regolith simulant (fake Moon dust). In less than a half an hour, I had 21 responses, and in less than two days I got access to about 5 tons of fake Moon dust. Many of the responses were, "We used to have some and then they threatened to take it away so I put a bunch in a Ziploc and it's in my office."

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I have a three day weekend this week... So as usual I planned a luxurious weekend full of working. Working working Working!

At 3 am Friday morning we all went down to Caltech for a big party to celebrate crashing the Cassini spacecraft into Saturn. Getting out of bed at that hour was BRUTAL, but once I drove down through the silent streets and made it to party central, I was awake and ready to do some serious Saturn crashing. And crashing I was, as I was not on the mission team in any sense of the word, despite having been in copy on all of the Cassini radar team emails for the past year.

After we let Cassini slip the surly bonds of space and touch the face of Saturn, I slept for a few hours and headed to work. I was supposed to be catching up on 8 hours of backlogged bureaucratic crap that I have to do to clear my plate for writing a proposal this weekend, but I got distracted, as usual, by the Moon mission that I am planning. Next week I get to have a trade study on my Moon mission, and I'm trying to gather as much information as possible about every aspect of it ahead of the study. One of the critical things that I have to do is to craft the "story" of the mission in such a way that it can sell to people who are not scientists. Then I can pitch the mission to people and convince them to give me their support.

Today I was supposed to go back to work to once again attack the 8-hour pile bureaucratic crap... but I got distracted again. They were having an open house at the New York Film Academy, where I have been eyeing a 12-week night-time filmmaking course. I figured I'd stop by for an hour. Four hours later... I was still there. They had a tour of the school, followed by a lecture, followed by miniature break-out courses, followed by a lunch. One of the courses that I went to was on "The art of pitching". They taught us how to take our enormously complicated stories and winnow them down to one-liners so that we could pitch them to executives and get them to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into our projects...

...turns out that even when I am at film school open houses, I am still working on my Moon mission!

I had lunch with a bunch of the professors afterwards and told them about my quest, and my sincere belief that film and the space industry are a match made in heaven. They all enthusiastically agreed, and revealed that they all wanted to be astronauts as kids, and that they still dreamed about going into space. Now I'm going to give them all a tour of NASA, and I'm probably going to take the plunge and sign up for the film school. It will completely dominate my life from January to March, but by the end I will learn how to write a screenplay, direct, frame shots, and edit... for not one, but *four* of my own short films! Wow! :O

I can tell that these classes are kind of nuts... very demanding and rigorous... but when you are paying your own tuition, that's the kind of attitude you value. You have to attend class four days a week from 7-10 pm and then actually film your projects on the weekends. Since most of my current craziest activities end at the end of September, that means I will have three months to "relax" before it begins. [Relaxing includes flying to France to give a TED talk about colonizing Mars to a crowd of 1200 people. :O ]

It struck me that almost all of the people on my tour of the film school were from abroad. Apparently students come from some 70 countries to the institute to learn the art of filmmaking. If those people will travel from across the world at great personal and financial sacrifice to come here to learn film, would it kill me to drive 20 minutes from my house in the city next door for the same education?

Time to go to the gym, and then settle down for 8 hours of bureaucracy.... unless I get distracted by a party that's happening tonight. #partytilyoudrop #governmentbureaucracy #moonshots #LosAngelesLiving

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