This was one hard work day. Vacationers would not appreciate it, and we don’t wish it upon anyone else. Although I would not trade it for anything else.
We had to change three months worth of preparations for inter-hemispheric operations, spanning 52,000 km and 4 countries, all in one day. At the same time, two instruments broke that took people from places as far apart as Boulder and Miami to work on it or to fly to Kona to fix. We worked from 7 am till 6 pm, and I am editing this at 10 pm. Hard work? Worth it? I would like to think so. Still think government workers are all worthless slackers? Come join us for a day. E-mail me and I will set up access for you to see if I am posting the truth.
But we get our rewards too. In the evening, we get the feeling that even if we are not done, we have done our best. And we earned our mai tais today. We will not be drunk; the alcohol just takes the edge off the enormous fatigue that otherwise would still be with us tomorrow morning.
Tonight it rained in Kona. We were very tired and after dinner, we tried to run back to the hotel to escape the rain, which was coming down so hard as if it knew that it only had a few minuted to get us. We ran to the awning over the entrance to the hotel, looked at each other and, without saying a word to each other, came out from underneath it and stood in the rain, looking up and laughing to each other. It felt crazy, we got totally soaked but it felt so good. Something comes upon you once in a while, I can’t explain it: four grown-up people who just worked a hard day, spent more time together than they care to admit, just stood there, feeling the rain falling on their cheeks. Perhaps we had too much to drink? I think not. It is just that you have to let the warm rain wash off your worries at the end of the day. Or wait, did you have tears too that you would rather others did not see but trusted the warm rain to wash off? Let the rain take care of that for you, you can’t go wrong there. Rain will take care of everything.
Sorry, this was rather personal. But then again, who cares? If you are reading this you probably felt the same way at least once, at some point. If you never did, I am sorry for you and hope that you will, for you have missed a lot. No offense.