Oh no! We're out of tape.
Evidence shows that a bad dress rehearsal can actually improve your chances of having an excellent performance. This little factoid is a bit of a relief to me right now.
The best laid plans...other cliches....
These last few weeks we've really ramped up with the anxiety inducing snafus. A kludged helium order, lost and found equipment, rain, rain, cold temps and rain, last minute location changes, chutes that don't deploy and crunch the GoPro on the pavement, Easter brunch, endless changes to travel forms, more helium disasters, warehouse alarms, two sets of t-shirts that haven't shipped, a poster that's too fancy for the UNC print shop, dive-bombing strangers with the payload, 361 pages of manuals, melting Styrofoam with "Styrofoam safe" paint, accidental balloon over-inflation, outdated software that won't install, fried GPS hoozies, charging an un-chargeable GPS and whatever happens tomorrow.
But we've also had some wins! Two critical build days happened that really sealed up the metaphorical cracks in our literal hull. Our poster and notebook are so fly that they could pull our cooler to space. (Which, I mean, they might have to....See also: Helium.)
We found all of our lost stuff just in time to use it, test it and make a full back up payload.
Our leader looks so calm, relaxed and well rested, though. So Zen. The stress isn't getting to him at all.
Fingers crossed for helium at launch! And simple travel plans! And sturdy space batteries! And a fluffy landing in a public park that isn't so public that the payload gets looted but is public enough that we can waltz in with all of our weird paraphernalia and snatch it up!
No comments:
Post a Comment