Tag: Alaska

Day 9-Fredericksburg Rocket Launches Day 2, Rain, Sun, and Rockets

We awoke to rain this morning. The gauge at my house showed and inch and 40 points. This made for a wonderfully cool start to the day. It stayed cloudy a good part of the day, but the ceiling lifted so that we were a go for launches,

We actually started the day by locating a rocket we had all searched for numerous times yesterday to no avail. We decided to make a pass by the tank in the back, and there it was just waiting to be found. This made five finds for us for Thursday’s rockets. Today was a different story though. None of the rockets were in our area, and though we did search for several, we ended the day with two nose cones, and then we helped Team Five recover one we had walked right past earlier and they had gone back and found.

The Recovery Teams were all having a great time. We do get a little competitive and do all love to find the rocket first, but at the same time we all search well together. Recovery is the name of the game, and  finding and returning those rockets to the students is the main objective. We have a really awesome group of recovery volunteers, and we really enjoy working with each one of them. They are a fun group. Of course, the whole SystemsGo organization is like this, they all work hard, and have fun while they are accomplishing the goal of the weekend.

Mission Control launched 21 rockets today  and only had 2 others that didn’t pass to the final stage to launch. Recovery located and returned all but two back to the students, and those are still being sought after.

Mid way through the day, the clouds burned off and rewarded us with  a bright blue sky to continue launching. The schools involved in today’s launches included: Fabens High School, RL Turner High School, Marble Falls High School, Akins High School, Maypearl High School, North Lamar High School, Tom Moore High School, and University High School. Once again I want to extend congratulations to each of these schools and their students for a successful program in making it here with their vehicle, and a successful launch.

Tomorrow, Saturday May 16, there are 20 more launches scheduled.  Following is the launch schedule which can also be downloaded and the SystemsGo website, which is www.systemsgo.org .

Saturday, May 16, 2015
School
Name		 # 1st Level
Tsiolkovsky		 # 2nd Level
Oberth
Alamo Heights High School
Colin Lang		 3
Fort Stockton High School (Midland)
Jim Hatcher		 5
Henrietta High School
Doug Underwood		 1 1
McGregor High School
Chris Kuhl		 2
Northwest High School
Ashley Mitias		 4 2
Union Grove High School
Greg Park		 1 1
6
Schools Launching
Totals 13 7
May 16th Total Rockets 20

Tomorrow is a very  special day in our family in that our other wonderful daughter, Kasey Burow, turns 20. She is in the Navy, stationed in Norfolk, VA. She was also a STEM student and built and launched rockets here in Willow City as well with her classmates. She is now an Avionics Structural Mechanic, working on Sea Dragon Helicopters.  She is planning to take courses through Embry Riddle University to pursue an Engineering Degree as well.  We are so extremely proud of her and all she is doing. I hope you have a Happy Birthday tomorrow Kasey. We all love you.  Don’t  worry you will hear about it again tomorrow as well, I would never let you off the hook this easy on your birthday.

Look for more pictures from today’s launch on Facebook and be sure to come back for more high lights. Have a wonderful evening.

www.systemsgo.org as always is the place for more information on this program. Take the time to get your school involved, the future of your students will be greatly benefited.

Day 7- Wild Wednesday

Well what a day today was, and it isn’t quite over yet. We finally got rain here, what  a blessing. I had an inch and 40 points in my gauge at the house. I know we had more than that at work. It pretty much rained all day. And then we ended the day with a rainbow at around five o’clock, and then an absolutely gorgeous sunset. A myriad of blessings all in one day. Thank you Lord.

Work was busy again. I think they meter crews were trying to see how much they could do in the few days left before billing. It kept me busy and that was good.

My son tried to burn up his truck today. He was working on it after dark last night and forgot he left a pair of needle nose pliers on the radiator. On the way to school this morning they ended up on his battery and started a fire that put a hole in the battery, fried a ground wire and put a hole in a vacuum line, as well as ruining one of the contacts to the battery.  We replaced the contact and the battery and he managed to repair the rest. It was an expensive lesson.  he is still on the road though, so I guess all is well.

I had lunch with an old friend. We talked about old times, and how we met our spouses, the cost of living in Alaska verses here and pretty much decided things were more expensive up there, but in comparison were quite relative. We talked and laughed and  picked on each other for the rest of the day. It was fun, and a day i will remember for a long time. I am really glad we got to catch up, we will just have to try to keep in touch now.

Chelsea and Guy should be in soon, and then tomorrow starts the infamous rocket launches I have been telling you about.  Below i s the schedule for tomorrows launches, There are currently 17 rockets scheduled. I will try to post each days schedules in my blog.

Thursday, May 14, 2015
School
Name		 # 1st Level
Tsiolkovsky		 # 2nd Level
Oberth
Big Springs Charter (Ed Brune)
Tripp Davenport		 1 1
Fredericksburg High School
Andrew Matthes		 1
Hamilton High School
Seaborn Ashby		 1 1
Hollenstein CTC
Richard Griffith		 1 1
Kingwood High School
Louis Mascolo		 2 1
Kingwood Park High School
Jim Brown		 3
New Diana High School
Shawn Warden		 1
Roosevelt High School
Jessica Quisenberry		 2 1
8
Schools Launching
Totals 11 6
May 14th Total Rockets 17

Good luck to all the schools. If I get a chance to do some updates during the day tomorrow , then I will but don’t count on it. It will probably just be the end of day one. Here is the SystemsGo website again where you can find the livestream.

www.systemsgo.org

Good Day until tomorrow.

Day 3- Of Rockets, Old Friends, and Old Memories….

Well it was a really great day. I didn’t get to watch the live stream on Rockets 2015/Houston. Unfortunately i was busy around the house, and then couldn’t remember my log in, so I will figure that out tomorrow and watch some then. I did get updates from Steve though. He said all went well, recovery was at about 80% so that is actually pretty good. They sent up 12 today. There are 14 more planned for tomorrow. They only saw one alligator and one rattle snake, so that is good.

Even though I didn’t watch myself, my sister-in-law did and she said the live feed was having some difficulty. Hopefully that is resolved now and will be better tomorrow. Of course, she was still able to watch several, so it wasn’t too bad.

It will be a long, hard day for the crew tomorrow, starting early and ending late possibly and then a late and long drive home to Fredericksburg after they pack it in for the day. Keep them in your prayers so all goes well and everyone returns home safely, both the SystemsGo crew and the students of the schools attending.

I attended the 60th wedding anniversary of some of my parent’s best friends, Mr. Dennis Lange and his lovely wife, Mrs. Shirley Schnerr Lange. It was held in Doss, TX at the home of their daughter and her husband, Peggy and Clyde Crenwelge. There were about 100 folks in attendance and all enjoyed wonderful BBQ, beans, potato salad, and German chocolate cake. It was a wonderful celebration and an absolutely beautiful place to have it.

It was so much fun to be out there again and with friends we just don’t get to see or spend much time with anymore. Even their son, Jason Lange, who lives in Seward, Alaska was able to be in attendance. That in itself was a treat for everyone. He and I visited and caught up on each other’s lives and families. And of course reminisced about old times when we were kids running around out on the place. We all had a lot of fun back then. It was fun walking down memory lane and remembering all those old times and stories. I have to admit there were a few I had to think about, but, yes I do remember.

Of course, it is the water fights and playing hide and seek in the dark while Jason made scary cougar screams that I think I remember the most. Probably because they were a regular occurrence every time we went to the Lange’s house. You never went out there without at least one, if  not two changes of clothes, even in winter. Those were the days.

Congratulations Dennis and Shirley, what a wonderful 60 years you have had together. Thank you, Peggy and Clyde for the tour of your gorgeous home, hopefully we will all get together again soon. Thank you Jason for the visit and the trip down memory lane. It is too bad you and Rhonda don’t live closer, I am sure we could have had a lot of fun together still.

Well I warned you that some days would be more on a personal note. Thank you for indulging me today. Tomorrow, will be more on Houston Rocket launch, day 2, and perhaps Mother’s day.

www.systemsgo.org as always is the place for more information on this program. Take the time to get your school involved, the future of your students will be greatly benefited.