Monday, March 6

Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Cloudy
~50F

All that climbing yesterday took it out of me. I laid down for a quick nap at 5pm and woke up at 1am. I then proceeded to toss and turn for several hours. At 4am I woke and surfed the web, then returned to bed and slept till 6am.

Stacey surprised me with a wakeup call just after 6am. I wasn't to hear from her until Thursday but she was back in Seabrook. It was great to hear her and Jake. I can't wait for her next call tomorrow morning.

After breakfast we boarded a bus to head to JAXA. At JAXA we spent the morning reviewing the week's schedule. Lunch was spent at the cafeteria...Ramen noodles w/ wontons. The afternoon session was spent reviewing how we were going to setup a test with JAXA, NASA/JSC, NASA/MSFC, and TDRS. We rapped up around 430pm.

After a 20 minute stroll back to the hotel, we met in the lobby for a dinner patrol. 6 of us headed to the local Korean BBQ place while a large group headed to Shakey's Pizza for some corn and tuna pizza. We dined on some kim-che, beef, and something called a bah-bim-bah.

Its about 8pm now and we're calling it a night. Another 10594 steps today.

One more thing....what the heck is going on in the NFL labor talks. They've had like 20 'deadlines' over the last week. Everytime they get to the deadline they extend it. Apparently these 'deadlines' have as much teeth as a homeowner's association letter.

And props to the Aggie Men's Basketball team for perching on the precipice of the Big Dance. The first time since 1987.