200 plus cleans us out!

In anticipation of about 150 Halloweeners this year, Melody and I picked up 192 bags of Halloween pretzels. We figured it would be plenty enough for the kids, plus a few for our lunches. Boy, were we wrong.

Columbus has it’s Trick-Or-Treating fun on Halloween if Halloween falls on a Sunday. Otherwise it is the Sunday before Halloween.

So, come 2:00 on October 25th, the kids started to pile into the neighborhood. We live in one of those neighborhoods where people show up with mini-vans and kids pile out. By about 4:30, we were out of our 192 bags, and kids were still coming. We ended up turning away dozens of kids. Kase and Gus were outside yelling, “Sorry, no candy here!” Unlike most years of our amazingly long four hour window of candy goodness, kids were still wandering the streets at 6 pm. I wonder if anybody had candy left.

Melody and I chalk it up to good weather. I raked in a T-shirt after the kids were done wandering the neighborhood, and a long sleeve T-shirt was plenty warm for generally being outside.

Anybody out there able to top our 200 kids? Now, what do we plan for next year?

Ares I-X rollout

I missed most of the Ares I-X rollout this morning because I was sleeping. What a poor excuse.

For the first time in 30 years, a new NASA rocket – Ares I-X – is rolling out to the launch pad. This rocket stands 327 feet tall, and dwarfs the Shuttle Rotating Structure at the launch pad (for comparison, the tip of the orange fuel tank on the shuttle is 184 feet high). NASA claims (and I believe them) that this is the world’s tallest rocket.

Their are two separate launchers to the Ares series of rockets that are designed to replace the Shuttles after their retirement next year. The Ares I is designed to launch a 4 person “Orion” capsule (once called “Apollo on steroids”). The bigger Ares V is supposed to be the heavy lift version, carrying the lunar module. After both rockets launch, the payloads would rendezvous with the Orion capsule in low Earth orbit, and then blast off to the moon.

Of course, this is all just hypothetical, as the government may cancel the whole thing because of technical difficulties and cost overruns. But if they do, then I will just cheer even more for the private company SpaceX, which is scheduled to launch their first Falcon9 rocket before the end of this year. SpaceX is the world’s first privately owned company that has successfully built and launched a liquid fueled rocket. Their CEO is the guy who created PayPal, among lots of other cool things.

Ooh, Ares I-X is at the rotating structure… I gotta go!

No Chicago in 2016

Chicago did not make the cut. I don’t know who won yet… but will find out soon.

Half Way

Nick and Sterling are somewhere around half way through their Europe biking trip. And as I expected, their updates to their web site have been limited and sparse.

Their last post was on September 14. Amazingly, they included some pictures of their adventure. But no comments are allowed, so I can’t even say, “Hey, that is a great picture of some river somewhere in the world!”

In other travel news, my siblings are out of state or will be soon. My bro and his wife headed to New Orleans for the weekend and the Bears game (and I think they abandoned their Japan trip website). My Sis will be soon or already is on her way to Disney World with her family for her eldest son’s birthday party. I heard you get in free to the parks on the day of your birthday. And to take it one step further, my Brother-In-Law CJ is working his butt off in NC. I wonder if he is doing any cycling while he is down there.

Now, if they ever checked my web site, they could see all the things I write about them. he-hee.