First order of business today was a trip to the College Park Air Museum in . We are looking at how we might work together on how to teach the public about aviation. The air field at college park was one of the oldest public airfield. 

The museum had a really amazing collection of vitage planes.. including a wright brothers flyer !

 

We had a good meetign witht he staff on possible collaborations.. then headed back to DC. 
after a quick lunch we headed to the air and space museum . Our goal was to get some  ideas  for our own demonstrations. Much of the museum was closed for renovations.. That turned out to be soemthign of a blassing as there was so much to see there. 

They had an amazing exhibit on early flight includign a ton of original wright brothers gear !

 

The museum had some great interactives and live science guy !

 

Even a crop duster from tiny monroe lousiana.. where my aunt Brig gre3w up after she and her mother escaped from a nazi concentration camp in WWII.

Next stop was the DC children’s museum . Shannon had arrainged a meetign with the staff . Our goal was to understand some of their first principles sceince demos for younger kids. We got a cooks tour of the place.. I was very imrpressed with all the interactivity. 

 

we’d had a great tour !.. lots of good ideas we can use. 

We walked back to the Beta site  by way of the white house…. 

 

We spent a few more hours in set up of our demos… 

 

it had been a fun and uesful day,.. 
nite all, nite sam
-me 

We spent most of the day down in Beta’s DC office installing the 4 demos we’d driven down. Can’t show that./ but it was a fun and busy day moving, unpacking,  installing. it felt good to get these demos in place. 
we rolled  the  mobile  ones  in during the morning   then had to leave the office while they held a client meeting. During the 2 hour berak we made a quick visit to the Spy museum .. It was fantastic !

then back to teh office to unload the big demo.. It was more than 400 pounds . Luckily Aaron was  a pro  with the forklift we rented

 

THe installation went faster than we’d planned.. but takign apart the crate took more time than we’d thoguht. By the time we finished it was abotu 7PM.
We headed out for Ethipian food that we’d all been thinking about all day

It was a great meal with gerat freinds. We were so gfull that we decided to walk home.. about 45 minutes.. we walked thoguht the Mall .. whcih was beutiful at night !

 

I was really moved by the Lincoln Memorial .. his features.. his expression.. and his words.. they seemed to be as relavent today as when he spoke them

we walked the length of the mall to the WWII monument. 

we went by the capital whcih is now heavily barricaded. 

 

Then back to the airbnb to sleep. We had more to do tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

I met. my friend and coworker Shannon at 8AM this morning to load up a bunch  of demos we are taking down to our colleagues in our DC office. We were doing this in prep for an event they are hosting. 

We had a rented Uhaul box truck absolutely packed with demo motors, batteries and model planes. It was a 10-ish hour drive down to DC… shannon drove about 2/3 of the time.. I drove about 1/3. It was fun talking and listenign to music.. We made good time and only stopped twice. By 7Pm-ish we were down in DC.  Our good friend Aaron had flown down from Montreal and he came and met us.. .. and our friend Matthew came to drop Diane by. Diane was in DC hanging out with Matthew, his wife Caroline, their daughter Anna .. and Matthews mom Kate.   It was a fun moment of crossing multiple friend streams !

 

Long day.. but pretty fun !

nite all, nite sam

-me

Busy day,. Diane is down in DC ,. heading down tomorrow to meet up. Without her here I tend to de-regulate.. I forget to sleep, eat, exercise. etc.. Luck for me my good friend Doug invited me out to hike part of the catamount trail near nebraska notch. Doug is a great hiking buddy.. full of stories and a fast hiker. It was a beautiful trail and a beautiful day. I think we went about 7.5 miles

 

Got home in time to change clothes and drive to charlotte to meet Marie. We were doing some check out and repair on Fluffy’s lights in prep for some upcoming local events (New years !).. we quickly found the bug we were chasing. Always wonderful working with Marie

 

 

THen back home to do some fixing around the house. One job was to replace the lights in the front entrance way and tower. The former are about 35 feet in the air.. the latter is up in the cupula of the house..   Quite an adventure just to change 5 light bulbs. They were either burned out or old school vacuum fluorescents. I put in new color controlled wifi bulbs.. great for energy savings. and fun way to change it up.. Any color you want. 

Always an adventure crawling to the top of the house.. I kept trying not to think that I was 55 feet in the air 🙂

Starting an early drive tomorrow. More from the road !

nite all, nite sam

-me