Extraordinary fun with astronauts and a fab new tent

[Barb T]

Hi all,

Just came back from a truly extraordinary experience that I just had to share with all y'all. The back story is that I've had the honor and privilege of being one of the instructors for geology training for the newest group of NASA astronauts, who were selected last August. If you'd like to read about these amazing people, you can go to http://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/2013astroclass.html

Aaaaanyway, we had them out in northern New Mexico last week on the Taos Plateau to give them some experience in geologic field work, and we camped for a week with them in the Wild Rivers area of the Rio Grande Gorge north of Taos. Earlier this spring, I'd discovered a tent-making company in the UK that makes extraordinary tents. The company (http://www.fieldcandy.com/) makes tents with killer customizable rain flies. I had them make me the rain fly in the pic below:



For those of you geeks on the Forum, I'm a structural geologist, and sigma 3 is the least principal compressive stress when you're talking about stresses involved in rock deformation, so my daughter (the quintessential, lovable geek) suggested Sigma Three Tavern for the pub name. Field Candy also lets you customize a sign board, so we added "Where friends come to decompress" to the fly:



So, on to the story about the new astronauts. On the other side of the tent from the pub name, the fly has a window with a pic with a pool ball (a 4 ball) that says, "We have 4 pool tables." The new astronaut class has 8 people in it, and they have nicknamed themselves "The 8 Balls". So, they took a Sharpie and changed the 4 ball on the fly to an 8 ball, and then (*squeals*) signed the fly with a silver Sharpie! I was so thrilled that I about passed out.





And here they are in front of their artwork (with me in the middle!):



Dunno if any experience for the rest of my life will top that!