Octavian stowes away in my luggage!

01:58 EST, 23:05 local time Portland Mariot, Portland, OR

This is Octavian.  He decided to come along on the cruise.  He was given to me by a friend in Texas (thanks Jenni!).  He is looking forward to being photographed on the ship and starring in this blog.

Travel day was a success.  We arrived in Portland on time, with all of our mysterious science gear luggage… well most of us did.  5 out of 7 isn’t too bad.  On our San Francisco layover Melissa and Geoff decided to take United Airlines up on one of those give up your seat get a $400 travel voucher deals, so they will get in tomorrow.  Hopefully they had a fun evening in San Francisco.  We are looking forward to finding creative ways for them to repay us for their little getaway 😉

We had a funny moment in the airport when Pete’s computer died (no, that’s not the funny part).  I decided that maybe my traveling companion Octavian could help with the fix.  As soon as Octavian came out of my bag it became immediately obvious that Geoff, Charles, and Melissa also have small squishy travel companions!  They put their noggins together, but were still unable to fix the laptop.  It will be interesting to see what shenanigans they get in to on the boat.

The team tries to fix Pete's computer.

I am looking forward to sleep.  The airplane was super dry and I have a bit of a sore throat.  However, I am fully confident that will be gone tomorrow… being sick on the boat is really not an option.  Tomorrow we pick up chemicals from a colleague who ordered them for us.  It is actually a big pain to order certain chemicals and have them sent somewhere other than the address you have on file with the company, so figuring out how to get these chemicals to the West coast took some creativity.  It is nice to have friends in labs throughout the country to call on for these types of favors.

Goodnight.