Time to play catch up

I apologize for the extended delay since the last post. Let me get you up to date!

Our spring semester was packed full of around two dozen schools, numerous Girls of Promise events, and even a few festivals. I want to say thank you to all the teachers and administrators that got in contact with us early - we appreciate your time and effort. Getting in touch with us far in advance gives us time to schedule the truck regionally within Arkansas week by week in order to save on fuel. For example, we were able to go to Hermitage, Norphlet, and Hampton in the same week saving us nearly 400 miles if we had to do them separately.

This summer we have been to partner museums, some teacher conferences/development sessions, as well as libraries. Derrick and I are in the process of sending out postcards to schools in counties we have not been to yet in hopes of expanding our exposure. We are also giving the worksheet and some of our exhibits a tune up. For example, the video inspection exhibit will have clean new slides available for the eager students this fall semester. The X-Y coordinate grid on the worksheet the students work on while on the truck has been revamped and is now more comprehensive.

As you can see, we are constantly working on improving the experience for our youthful explorers. Don't forget to check out our Flickr page - I will be adding some new photos in the near future.

Fans of Fall

Beautiful out on the road in November:

The teacher become the student

Philli was awesome - tons of American culture and history right in your face. The weather was crisp and clear which enabled us to enjoy our walks through the streets in between our conference sessions. The Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) annual conference had, from what I could tell, a solid turn out. Derrick and I got a chance to become students for a bit and learn more about the industry we work in. There were dozens of booths for every element for museums and education.

I found out that there is a huge catalog this one vendor has that is entirely filled with dinosaur fossils! This thing would be a seven year old's fantasy. Scores and scores of pages filled with color pictures of fossils. Other vendors were showing off their star-labs, which are inflatable domes that project the night's sky on the ceiling. There were so many new things to look at and learn from that it took all day Saturday to do. Derrick and I even got to compete as dinosaurs in a simulation video game that just came into production.

It was not all fancy exhibits and games though. Two full days were occupied by group discussions and presentations about our specific field - outreach education. We learned a lot about how other educators and museums run their operation, which gave us confidence in our own method.

After the conference we got some repair work done on the truck. The fogger for the energy beam station is now almost fully functional, the phones are working for the aft fuel cell station, and the wheelchair lift is operational once again.

Last week had us in Jonesboro and Corning with some well-behaved and bright students. Three different groups were able to get all four sensors on at the energy beam station, which is a record so far for a single school.

This was when we were in Bigelow, AR the other day.

Here we are set up in Texarkana at the Quadrangle Festival.

On the road again

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, so let me update you guys. We had a tedious and educational trip up to Mountain Home. By tedious I mean agonizing. By educational I mean we learned to never take directions from that wretched GPS device again. It thought sending us through a "shortcut" in a 40' long truck was a grand idea. I know we had trouble near Magnolia, but this was ridiculous. Additionally, while going down a major 4 lane highway it got very confused and said we were on the "Old Dump Road" and needed evasive maneuvers immediately! We just turned it off and looked at our highly detailed Arkansas map from then on.

The trip up aside, the young explorers at Flippin were having a blast on board. The same was the case for Perryville and Bigelow the subsequent days. Perryville however, provided us our next big.... "adventure." We went to set up the truck in the standard procedure, but all of a sudden half the truck's power went out. We swapped generators and thought that solved the issue. I went in to talk to the class for their pre-trip pep-talk and got a ring from Derrick with bad news. The same thing was happening with the other generator also. This is where Thomas the History major gets to play electrician for over two hours!

With Derrick's watchful eye right by me making sure I did not kill myself and Marty from the exhibit fabrication place guiding me through step by step, we trudged along through a lengthy series of troubleshooting. I even had a fan club; three employees of the school stood as an audience for me during my interim as an electrician. After a while we were able to narrow down where the source of the problem might have been, but were unable to access or test it with our basic tools. A pro was needed.

This is where Diane and Derrick shift into "get important people that know how to do stuff here" mode and were hitting the phone lines. Diane, with her unwavering persona of authority, was able to get just the kind of guy we needed in just a couple hours. Mind you, this is a company that does not generally do emergency calls, so props to her. However, during Diane and Derrick's search for a professional electrician, Marty called me back and asked me to do one last thing to see if that was the problem. When he said it, it sounded so ludicrous it was probably going to work for some reason.

He told me to pull out about 6' of our shore power cable and then reel it back in. Why not? Afterward I turned the generator back on and boom, full power. I then informed Diane of the unexpected resolution and that we were good to go.

On a more brief note, Derrick and I were in Texarkana this past weekend at the Quadrangle Festival, which went well. Later this week we're headed out to Philli for career development!

Down South

Over the past two weeks Derrick and I were in the southern regions of Arkansas. Last week we went to the Portland, Wilmot, Dermott and McGehee schools- the young adventurers there were exceptionally well behaved and truly enthusiastic about our visit. The total number of kids we had aboard was 277, with quite a number of them leaving with Planet 'X' rockets as rewards for their hard work.

This week we went down near the Louisiana border to entertain the schools in Bradley, Taylor, and Emerson. Again I was very impressed by the behavior of the students, we only had to play the "quiet down explorers" message over the loudspeakers a couple times. Even though these were very small towns - one had a population of 359 - the students came in droves: 170 by the end of it.

Out on the road we had a few strange encounters. One was that there was a deer hanging out on the side of the road at 1:00 PM in the middle of the day. Another was the lone horse having a meal of municipal grass by the side of the highway. And finally there was the wonderful adventure of getting lost with a useless map, no cell phone reception, and a GPS device that decided it did not want to help us at the time.

The people there were very helpful, but unfortunately the road signs where we were did not provide as much aide to us. Sparse identification of roadways lead us to constant guessing of our location. Finally after giving up on our Google directions and the GPS device we waited for a passerby to help us out. The local volunteer fireman gave us excellent directions to our next destination and we were on our way. Of course as soon as we pulled out of the fire station the GPS somehow managed to exactly repeat the local's directions. Why it was not working in the parking lot is beyond me. That thing must be possessed.

None the less we made it out alive and better for it. The kids had a great time and we did too for the most part.

Until next time,
~The Planet 'X' Crew

Truck Driving Training

For the past two weeks Derrick and I have been at C1 Truck Driving Training out in North Little Rock. We learned ALL kinds of facts you could not have even thought existed. We learned about how air brakes work, safety tips for emergency braking, how to do an extensive pre-trip inspection of your vehicle, along with countless other items to further our knowledge of the Planet 'X' vehicle.

First we spent four days learning about general knowledge, air brakes, and combination (tractor trailer) information so that we could pass our written test and get our CDL learner's permit. That weekend we were taught about the pre-trip inspection and the following week we learned and practiced backing skills as well as on the road skills.

Yes, we learned how to drive on the road during the week of Gustav's constant barrage of rain. I was tested by the State Troopers last Friday and passed! Derrick's test is soon to be so hopefully he'll have the same result.