What a weekend! I am exhausted, but in a good way. There were so many activities and so little time!
Things really started on Thursday night, when I met a group at Boondoggle’s to celebrate the successful ATV docking. One of my friends has been working on the ATV program as a NASA representative since he started working here 8 (?) years ago, so he was definitely in the mood to eat, drink and be merry. That continued into Friday night with tacos and margaritas at Nick and Heather’s place. After we finished the margarita’s, we drank official ATV champagne (with a picture of the ATV on the label and everything!), followed by Nick and Heather’s anniversary champagne that they never drank on their anniversary, followed by some eiswein (ice wine) from their trip to Germany. I haven’t had that much alcohol in one night in ages, but it was spread out enough that it didn’t make me drunk, it just made me tired. It’s official: I am OLD.
On Saturday I was up bright and early for a BAM board meeting which lasted far too long — but we did get a lot done, so I guess that’s ok. After that it was a quick turnaround to get showered and meet the gang from the night before to head up to the Museum of Natural Science to see the Lucy exhibit. They brought the bones all the way from Ethiopia and we’d all been too lazy to go see them until now. With the exhibit closing at the end of April, there’s no time like the present! The exhibit had a lot of information about the history and culture of Ethiopia, but the good part was the Lucy section. I thought the exhibit was very well-done. (There was a lot of controversy when the exhibit arrived over the fact that the bones were even moved from Ethiopia to display in the first place, since they are so fragile, not to mention irreplaceable.)
The exhibit traced the various branches of how humans evolved, and which branch led to us. The common misconception is that we are descended from apes, but of course that’s not really true. We share a common ancestor with apes somewhere far, far in the past — 5 to 7 million years ago. That line split, with one path leading to apes and the other path leading to humans. So Lucy is not an ape, and yet she’s not human either. We aren’t directly descended from Lucy, because there have been many branches and many different hominids — we’re the only ones that survived.
The most interesting part to me was a wall display that discussed how paleoantropologists determine whether a species was bipedal (walked upright) or not. First you can check where the spinal cord leaves the skull. Our spines connect more or less in the middle of our heads, while Lucy’s connected far to the back of her skull. Then you can check the pelvic bone. Ours are short and wide to carry the load of walking upright and provide a base for the leg muscles, while a chimpanzee’s pelvis, for instance, is tall and narrow. You can also look at the knees. The reason apes hop around with their knees bowed out is that they don’t have fully formed knees. Humans, on the other hand, have fully articulated knees with a kneecap.
All in all, it was a great exhibit and if you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to check it out before Lucy leaves Houston.
Sunday was full, but calmer. I worked the BAM water station at Angie’s Half Crazy (the new half marathon in Clear Lake), followed that with a 22-mile ride on the new tri bike (desperately need a new seat), spent some time hanging out with Jose, and then had hibachi with a bunch of people for dinner.
On Thursday I go to Atlanta!
