Yuri - the excuse

Michael B. had invited Austin, Kindel, and I to attend the Yuri's Night celebration at NASA Ames facility this weekend. I guess there is a long tradition of celebrating everything regarding 'space' and technology, and in particularly noting that one of the big advancements in came about when the first cosmonaut orbited the earth - Yuri G. I don't remember his last name, and it's not important. Austin came down with the flu, but is still planning to come our way from Indiana sometime this week.

Yuri's Night was a crazy mix of Bay area culture. It was composed of the techy/nerd group (I kind of include Michael in this crowd, but he's no a nerd) and the electronic music/dress in black and think Aliens are real folk. Yeah, this is a gross over generalization of a complex mix of people. Nonetheless, Kindel and I were probably the weirdest people there, being that we weren't dressed up in some ridiculous costume and weren't in the tech industry. The only main group of people not represented (from the Bay area culture) were the yuppies - those with the big bucks and drive the bling-mobiles, or those who act like it.

Nonetheless, there was some incredibly cool stuff that I wouldn't have gotten to see or participate in, such as:

Tesla Roadster - an all electric sports car which Kindel I were able to sit in



Airplane acrobatics show - these guys were in acrobatics and made us sick to watch



Skytran presentation on futuristic mass transportation - this is the stuff sci-fi writers dreamed of, but is now showing great potential
NASA's astrobiology group - I was fairly familiar with their word, but it was nice to put some faces to their names (you know, authors of articles I've read).

Dude's singing karaoke on a machine that they powered by pedaling a bicycle.



Finally, this cool presentation on some recently released and continually updated images of earth from outerspace - the coolest part was when the presenter displayed earth with its thousands of satellites in orbit. We're talking about a massive array of satellites all around the globe. Very cool.




We probably won't do Yuri's Night again, but we're glad to have the time with friends and experience yet another adventure in the Bay area.