I'm a survivor.

Well, I've successfully made it through my first set of mini-gravity flights!! I've been in Ottawa for the past 4 days, subjecting myself to crazy tests all for the love of science (and, the love of doing cool things involving big planes).

Our plane, the Falcon 20:



Day one of flying was absolutely terrible - I was so sick on each of my two flights, and I had absolutely no idea why ANYONE would want to do this sort of thing:



This is our plane, doing its thing:



Basically, we do that rollercoaster part between 3 and 5 times in a row, loop back, and do another 3-5. And by rollercoaster, I mean a rollercoaster that rises and falls 10000 feet. This is only fun when its perfectly smooth, which on Monday, it wasn't. We finished flying Monday in the early afternoon. I felt sick until about 10pm, managing to consume about 12 grapes, a pickle, and a ginger ale over the course of the day. I dreaded going to sleep, because I knew I'd be waking up to another day of flying.

On Tuesday, Rebecca had the BEST idea ever: Gravol. I took half of one about an hour before the flight, and OH MY GOD it was so much fun. I got to sit in the jump seat between the pilots for take-off, listening to the going over the pre-flight checklist and chatting away calmly.



Jump-seat Mona-Lisa:


We did ten parabolas (two sets of five in a row) and I loved every minute. It was such a rush to look out the window and see sky... then ground... then ground rushing up to meet you... and then the rise up to sky again. So cool.

We celebrated the good day with some Keg, some sauna & mojitos, and some pie. I was afraid that maybe we celebrated too much, and prematurely, but today was also wonderful. During my flight today, I decided to take a parabola off from data collection and just enjoy it. So, I watched the earth shift in ways that its not supposed to shift when you're looking out of a plane window. In the mini-G phase (1/6th Earth gravity - about what you'd feel on the moon), I tossed my (empty! yay!) sick-bag up in the air and watched it hover. I floated off my seat a bit. During the 2G (twice Earth's gravity) phase, Jeff took an amazing video of dropping a piece of foam - it fell like a stone! Its funny - nobody will ever lose or gain weight as quickly or as effectively as they do during these flights. Over the course of a minute, I fluctuated between weighing about 20 pounds up to 260 pounds!! At 260 pounds, I did NOT feel like moving.

Aside from the flying, we did a lot of other fun things. We spent a lot of time out eating (from fantastic thai to one of Ottawa's three kosher 'restaurants' - actually a cafeteria in a fitness club) and drinking. Phil, Mike and I spent a ton of time in the hot tub and sauna. After the flights yesterday, we went and explored a decrepit plane on NRC grounds - apparently they're using it for materials research and examining how its body and wiring deteriorate.

NOT our plane:


Trying not to fall:


And after we wrapped up today, we headed into downtown Ottawa to see the parliament buildings. We brought the frisbee along, so we spent about 45 minutes tossing it around and I got to feel spring grass under my bare feet.




The whole trip was wonderful, and I would so do every bit of it over again (but, always with gravol for the flying bits).

The Vomit Comet

A quick update:
I am currently in Ottawa, participating in an experiment that most people think is completely crazy. I'm starting to think they're right. Right. So, there is research group that is located near the lab that I'm in, and they do a lot of vision research involving the vestibular system. Right now, they're trying to figure out hw we knoe that 'up' is up. To do this, they're trying to screw with our system, and take away normal cues to 'up.' First, they took away our visual cues: we're looking at a scene through a circular window and are unable to see anything else on the periphery. Then they rotate that scene. The whole time, you're making responses to images presented on the screen, and these responses are based on your perception of where 'up' is. Then, the clevel jerks decided that gravity probably influences this a great deal, so they decided to get rid of that (that = gravity).

Which brings us to the present: I am sitting in Ottawa, and today I have flown (twice) in an experimental airplane, and I have experienced near-weightlessness. The plane does these giant parabolas (like s' on their sides, and stretched out a bit) and when you come over the top of the curve, you get a bit of weightlessness, and almost no gravity. At the bottom, you get about 2x the normal gravity. That part SUCKs. This type of research plane is known as the vomit comet for a reason. Today,I think that I had a net total of four grapes (gross total was about a half bagel, 100 ml apple juice, and 16 grapes). But, it will be a cool story to tell the grandkids. I've completed two flights, and they're hoping to get six done in total. I've been told that they'll be able to get enough data out of three flights, so I'm hopefully only going to be doing one or two more (and hopefully tomorro.w's will be better than today's). Wish me luck!

Here is me on the plane:



It's not all bad, we did get to go to the big apple:

Somebody is trusting me with a hammer.

Tomorrow I'm going to be building a house in Scarborough with Habitat for Humanity. I'm kinda excited about this, it's definitely going to be an experience! I'm going to try really hard to not drop anything on myself ;) Anyways, I wasn't planning on talking about it on here, but a phone call changed my mind. I was asking my nana if she wanted to sponsor me, and as always, there were some hilarious results.

Some background: As a child, I was never allowed to carry my suitcase when I was traveling with my grandparents. My protesting that I was perfectly capable of carrying a suitcase led to this quote that is now entrenched in historical infamy: Put that down, you'll hurt your INNARDS. My innards. This quote has been tossed around in my family ever since! So, tonight on the phone, when my nana found out that yes, I would be building the house myself (not just fundraising), I promised her that I wouldn't hurt my innards. I then heard the rest of the story: according to nana, I have some sort of great aunt who allegedly hurt her innards by lifting something, and ended up with a tilted uterus. According to wikipedia, this is an actual condition (but, a condition that affects 20-30% of women). I promised that I would try not to tilt my uterus.

I'll wrap this up with the second gem from the call. My nana, still incredulous that I would be building something (me, who has TWO toolboxes, and uses them), asked me if I had ever nailed anything in my life.

I had to pretend to be rude and say that I was laughing at something on tv.

I love my nana.

*

Awww, Kurt Vonnegut passed away. It's been a while since I read any of his books, so I can't recall any quotes off the top of my head other than *. Here's a good one that I stumbled across today, from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got
about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies —
‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

Thanks for all of the wonderful words.

!!!

There are some exciting things going on in my life right now, and duly, I am excited. I've finally found a volunteer program that makes my heart race with how perfect it is for me. I have travel plans. I have new books. I'm officially working part-time. I've been to the new Whitby Hooters (with old Whitby friends).

First things first: Unite for Sight. It's an international NGO that aims to provide vision health care to people in developing countries - and I've just spent the past 3 years learning about & working in the field of vision health. They have so many choices for placements - the ones I'm considering are in Chennai, India, and in Accra, Ghana. Amazing. I'm really excited about this - I have my letters of recommendation lined up and will be applying either tonight or tomorrow.

Another bonus with the program is the flexibility - they have a ton of different dates to choose from, so it will be really easy to work in my volunteering plans with other travel plans. Mark and I are almost certainly going to head over to Poland sometime mid- to late June, and spend as much time as possible getting to know his family. The family side of our relationship is currently unbalanced - he's met absolutely everyone who shares some significant portion of my DNA, and I've only met his immediate family. I can't wait to see grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

Books: I now have a complete collection of Salinger novels. I'd read Catcher in the Rye years ago, but was recently re-convinced (Kurt tried once before, it didn't work) by Jaime to read Franny and Zooey. I plodded through it, and was won over a few pages before the end, and left with a feeling of love for absolutely every person in the world. It takes a good book to do that. Now, I'm starting on Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters.

Other: 1st weekday off is tomorrow: studying will be done. In a week and a half, I'm headed off to Ottawa to do some micro-g experiments, hopefully studying will be done there, too, but it will be dicey as my travel companions are some of CVR's funniest people. Hooters was great - we (4 girls: me, Kathleen, Andrea, and Molly; 1 guy: Anthony)had a fun time with our bouncy server who made plenty sure to only pay attention to Anthony. I guess it is the one place where you can't really complain about that kind of service ;)

According to my stat counter, I have a repeat visitor from the metro toronto police. That's odd. Hi there police people, I promise that I'm not doing anything illegal. I hope you find my lame stories interesting. Also, thanks for keeping me safe in my city, and please be mean to drivers who endanger people on bikes.

Welcome to April, sucker.

I was dog-sitting again over the weekend, which was ok, and nice for the most part. I was pretty blue yesterday about having nobody around to prank for April Fools - I could have put toothpaste or something in the dog's food but she wouldn't have gotten the joke. I complained about it to Adam, and then told him that the CN tower fell down (birds! Thousands of them! They all flew into it at once! They're ok!). I'm pretty sure that he neither believed me nor thought that it was a very funny attempt.

Later in the day (after noon! technically, April fool's was OVER), I was talking to Sharon in hopes of arranging a meet-up to see us some Ninja Turtles, when she dropped the bomb: She's pregnant, going to have a little bro or sis for Talon - likely sometime around Talon's birthday. I didn't believe her at first, but then got convinced and v. excited! raced downstairs to find her cell number, called her, and got laughed at for falling for it. Jerk. Though, I am kinda happy that I got pranked - I don't like it when perfectly good fun things get passed over.