Roadtripping north

Our journey form South towards the "cooler" north began with about 300mile detour to visit my cousin in Greer SC. Then we visited the Outer Banks.

And by the time we arrived to OBX (hip way of saying Outer Banks), I took a dip in the atlantic ocean where the waves were perfect.
The wrights brothers took flight at the spot near by our hotel some years back.. And the entrepreneur Americans had set up a visiting center with kite flying spot and a monument to mark the spot.. Did you know that the guys took flight and then just left and decided that they had reached their goal.. I wonder where they would have ended up if they had not given up.. perhaps invented the rocket engine... now they "only" built the first motorized airplane.. Here is one of the beatiful kites they were flying at the visitor center.

Here is the squid which is pulled up by the kite above it.. We saw the dolphins and watched history channel "crock hunter" about the southern americans.. After the tour of outer banks we headed up towards Philadelphia, via maryland and delaware.
In the end of the trip I calculated that we had been driving this holiday some 3300 miles, (5300 km for us metrics).
I have to admit that I am little surprised and relieved that we managed to drive such a distance and not a scratch added to the beatiful Merc. Thank you Father-in-law for borrowing the car.

Grinny at OBX, check out the waves!

In short our northward trip was (packing like crazy, late afternoon lift off, 3 hotels, fast food, 120 bucks worth of gas, cousin, beach, bridge-tunnel-bridge, oh-my-gosh doe we ever make it. Thank you all for your support and may God help the families who have lost their loved ones in Norway.

P in Philly with new glasses and Loupes.

There and back again

It has been a weekend to remember,
With my very own eyes how a rocket was launched into space!! It was really really great, I totally felt like watching something very special. There were people who had seen many launches, yet they were there watching and waiting.. It really is something worth checking out if you get the chance. It was so special that even though I had a camera in hand I didn't even take a photo. For as long as I could see this welding spark bright light pushing upwards I followed it with my eyes.. And then pop! it went into the cloud filled sky and all the people around us turned around and headed for their cars.. We waited and stood on grass as instructed by a local veteran of launches to feel the rumble that was to follow.. Then I took a few photos..

Trail into the skies!

Then we headed out to our hotel Aloha at New Smyrna beach. The place had received some great reviews on Google Map pages. When we got there we knew that they had not been favored for nothing. The place we got was a separate cottage with two bedrooms, living room and kitchen. Wonderful place and just so lovely. This day had really been amazing. We took a walk to the near by park to see if the local manatees or dolphins happened to be out, none were visible. We stayed for a while with our Finnish-Turkish friends and watched as the kids had good time. Thanks everybody for such a lovely day, not only a wedding anniversary, but a launch day. God Bless the astronauts on a mission at the space station and hopefully we get to come see an other rocket launch soon here. We will surely book a special viewing tickets to the Kennedy Space center as I have heard that there you can feel the earth shake as the shuttle takes off!!

P

Man-a-Tees

At Homosassa national park we saw these gentle creatures eat lettuce and swim about with their mono-fins, It was truly funny looking action. The rangers poured heads of lettuce onto the waters surface and the creatures came slowly but surely to much on the floating feast.

The demonstration in the morning went wrong as no manatees showed up for us to observe, but later on they did come and we had a good opportunity to watch them munch on lettuce. The demonstrator asked the audience what is the closest relative to the manatee.. answer came quickly, "elephant".. I was not so surprised, I think one can guess almost any animal living in water breathing air and it is rather "close" relative to the Manatee. My reasoning being, we are by DNA more then 90% the same as the common carrot.. so we are really not far off if one starts to look at DNA as a evidence of relationship.. I would not use DNA for such as it is not very good indicator of relation between animals... Manatee has much similarities with seals and dolphins.. I would think he is "relative" to them..
No matter we enjoyed watching these animals and did the tour of the zoo surrounding it.. watched animals in cages and I felt little sad.. even though the cages are big, there is really no equal to the freedom they enjoy in the wild, especially animals living in the sea.. The largest playing field in the world.. now shrunken into an area which can be calculated in gallons.. not in cubic miles. I took some photos of the birds and here is one representing the feeling of beauty in captivity.

After the manatee park and zoo, we headed out to a beach via Pizzeria. We decided upon a medium pizza, but the very nice man at the counter said that the large is cheaper.. I wondered about his offer for a while and then just said.. "only in America.. we'll take the large one" And sure enough it was big enough to feed both of us twice.
At the local beach we spotted a dolphin and I got a short glimpses of the fishes at the Gulf of Mexico.. the ones that didn't die due to high oil concentrations provided by the BP some year ago..

snook

On the way home we almost ran out of gas and baby struggled to stay awake.. But other than that the 2hour drive home was great.

Happy Independence day and summer to all!

P

Student styles ala UF

walking around the graduate/married housing here, one can easily spot the different residents by their style... not the interior ie. curtains laps etc. but their lawn ornament collection/garden. Here are three that I spotted near by..

First on offer is the "foreigner chic", which often includes japanese style beds and chairs. This particular model is also the one we are rocking at the moment.. It offers easy upkeep and simplicity, besides leave nothing behind take nothing but pictures is easily accomplished when the "foreigner" leaves..

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Here is the "student lazy", it differs from Foreigners style by the fact that trash is collected, and again thy style most likely reaches further than the doormat inside the house. The resident most often had parents taking care of the garden at home.(or gardener if you happen to study in a school where to rich attend). This model offers no security deposit pay-backs and ultimate low maintenance. In other less dry countries this version is much greener, sometimes even encroaching upon the path to the door, which is only kept open by the midnight less steady students, who bush jump into the wilderness in their futile attempt to impress the opposite sex.

Here is the ultimate goal, which lurked in the minds of the landscaping architect, who designs student housing. It is up-kept by a mature responsible student/couple. Things change on this yard style from season to season, often edible plant appear among the flowers, only to be included later as a edible ornament next to the organic steak or deep-fried tofu. This style is high maintenance, but is very likely to pay back in getting your deposit back and possibly a notice from the housing dept. that you are not supposed to grow your own organic garden, but as you are so nicely doing it, I'll let it slide.

I hope my Oulu apartment is something like Foreigner chic and ultimate decorator style..

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Sometimes you have to try again

Well, things are moving along, my samples are frying in the TEM tube as I try to take some pictures.. I really should be more careful with them.. I don't want to end up re-doing the delicate business of cutting hard tissue samples with ultra-microtome.. This is what it is like.. Imagine an ocean, size of a raindrop.. then imagine a ship in distress floating wildly on the tiny waves being pushed and pulled by the electrostatic forces acting on the poor vessel. Ok got that.,. now imagine a huge shaky hand holding onto a stick which is attached to a single hair, which is used to push on to the ship to "stabilize it"... now if you are still with me.. try to imagine a small 1cent coin.. very small that has a hole in the middle, covered with a film of a chemical that does not dissolve into the tiny ocean.. you now try to push the fragile! ship onto the film, and raise the whole contraption out of the water, not wrinkling the ship, not pushing it too hard with the single hair, with you see through a microscope.. by the end of the day you are two things.. tired of the microtome and sure you have Parkinson's disease... Here is the ocean and some of the ships for you to use in order to imagine the working conditions I have been in for the past few weeks.

Not only small but expensive...cutting edge of science..

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