adventure

The Zeppelin Eureka from Airship Ventures offers the only commercial passenger airship operation in the United States. It offers flight-seeing tours above San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Monterey, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles.

Alex at Ravens in Hollywood has been tracking the Zeppelin. I’m hoping for some action shots.

Here’s another video from NBC 4:

Carl Sagan - ‘A Glorious Dawn’ ft Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)

A musical tribute to two great men of science. Carl Sagan and his cosmologist companion Stephen Hawking present: A Glorious Dawn - Cosmos remixed. Almost all samples and footage taken from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Stephen Hawking’s Universe series.

Download video and MP3 here: http://www.colorpulsemusic.com/youtube.html

I was only six months old at the time, but I remember every detail thanks to recordings, photographs, and written accounts. The event implanted in me an undying belief that humanity belongs out there on the Moon and in the vast void as much as we do here in our cradle, Earth. Forty years ago today, man’s first unsteady footsteps on another world sparked the imaginations of millions of people.

The above picture of the Earth accompanied by its silvery satellite was taken almost exactly six years ago by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express on its way to the Red Planet. Seeing the eternal pair of orbs together from afar lends a perspective that might be frightening to someone unable to face the void. But for humanity to grow up, to leave behind its infancy, the void must be faced with open arms and a wide smile.

A plaque was left behind by the Apollo 11 astronauts, attached to the Eagle landing module. It said this:

Yes, it still brings tears to my eyes.

Thank you to Neil, Michael, and Buzz for risking everything to inspire the entire world, and thanks to NASA (and to the ESA and all of the national and international space agencies) for continuing to dream.

I have to get out on a trail, even if it’s only a few miles — I’m starting to get twitchy. :)

Meanwhile, Alex McInturff is off on a real adventure.

“Stanford grad student walking 320 miles in John Muir’s footsteps”

Alex McInturff, a 23-year-old earth sciences student, finds that much has changed as he retraces the conservationist’s trek from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley in 1868.

McInturff, walking through Central California, says his spirits began to lift once he hit the Sierra foothills. The mountain range that changed Muir’s life 141 years ago hasn’t lost its magic. “Returning to the forest today, I rediscovered the freedom I love about walking, which was lost a little in the San Joaquin,” McInturff wrote on his blog.

Not sure how they managed to mangle his blog California Transect’s URL so badly in the online version of the article, but it should be muirwalk.blogspot.com. Alex describes himself and his journey thusly:

On April 6, Alex McInturff is setting off to retrace Muir’s path across California. Alex is a master’s student in the Earth Systems Program in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. He has been researching the history of and current state of conservation in California in conjunction with the Bill Lane Center for the American West and our collaborator iMapData. Alex envisions his own walk as a way to examine the history, current state, and future prospects of a wide range of conservation efforts on public and private lands, across a telling transect of California, from urban areas, through suburbs and parks, across the large parks and ranches of the Coast Range, the irrigated industrial agriculture of the Central Valley, Kesterson Wildlife Refuge, up the Merced River, across the Don Pedro Reservoir and Lake McClure, through historical mining towns, and national forests to Yosemite National Park.

I’ll definitely be adding his blog to my RSS reader.

Wondermark, wonderful as usual.