End of Summer 2020
September 16, 2020
I’ve had “Blog Post” my to-do list for over a month now, and naturally I’m just now getting around to it. However for that reason, there is plenty to update on. The summer wrapped up, and I’m officially a working professional now. I can finally say that I’m an actual engineer and grown up adult!
Backing up to July and following the rocket launch, I began packing up my house in Stillwater after 4 years of living there. It wasn’t as sentimental as I thought it would be, and I think it helped that I did it over the course of almost 2 weeks, rather than in a single weekend. I didn’t throw out too much stuff other than posters and washed out OSU t-shirts. What made the moving process complicated was that Sam and I weren’t moving from one place directly to another, but rather into a storage unit for one month, then on to our next unknown address sometime in August or September. Fortunately, we had friends to help us move everything to the storage unit, and then we bought Golden Dragon for everyone, eating in a big circle of the newly-emptied living room. It was almost like a mini going-away party too.
We used the last few days of July to deep clean the house, and then that was that. Thank you 1715 W 3rd Ave for 4 years worth of college and grad school memories.
With my time in Stillwater officially over, I returned home to my parents in Little Rock. Because Sam and I wouldn’t be starting at Textron until September 14th, we aimed to secure a lease around September 1st, so I anticipated remaining with my folks for a solid month which I was actually really excited for. I get along really well with my parents, and a visit longer than a few days would be welcomed. As it would turn out, the time in Arkansas was over much sooner than expected, but for good reasons.
I ended up coming right back to Stillwater in early August to help with another rocket launch, and in doing so, I got to play tennis with my group one more time too. We flew our smaller Honeywell rocket on an Aerotech M2500T and it went without a hitch. We had their payload returned to them, motor hardware cleaned, and cars loaded up before noon which was awesome.
In early August, Sam was amazing and handled the house hunting search entirely on her own, researching houses and apartments for rent and making 2 trips up to Wichita from Norman to look at places. She found our current house for rent, and we signed for it, set to move in in mid-late August. Before that however, my parents and I took a weekend trip to Nashville not only for quality time together, but also because a long time friend from my 2012-2013 foreign exchange year in Austria was helping her parents move to Knoxville, and this would be the first time to meet in person since we departed Austria in 2013. Kyra and I got to spend the day together, and it was awesome to reconnect with someone I hadn’t seen in 7 years but was still close through Skype calls and writing letters through those years.
On August 21st, I left Little Rock and over the course of the weekend, emptied the storage unit, drove a moving truck to Wichita, and began to unpack. We had 3 full weeks between moving in and starting work, and I’m grateful it wasn’t less. The house needed some love to become clean and homey, so the time to do that without working each day was critical. We took an (expensive) trip to IKEA in Kansas City to buy furniture and ordered more through Amazon. This past weekend, on our final weekend before starting work, we threw a 25th birthday party/house-warming party for Sam, and that was our final push to unpack the last box and make the house presentable.
The final thing I’ll share from the past few weeks was how great Airfest 26 was over Labor Day weekend. The Kloudbusters did a great job hosting a launch launch while safely observing COVID precautions. Sam and I camped out 3 nights, brought Kenzie to her first launch (she was amazing at camping and handling loud rockets), and volunteered each day. I flew 3 rockets and helped with another Honeywell launch of an M2500T. Several more OSU students came up also, and we had our first L1 certification flights in a couple years, as well as our 3rd-ever L3 flight! It was awesome to see those cert flights, especially now that I’m officially no longer at OSU. It gives me confidence that Oklahoma State rocketry will go on.
My launches consisted of my first cluster flight on 3x F42T motors, the maiden flight of Miss Kenzie (yes I painted and named a rocket after my dog) on an I161W, and the 4th flight of my L3 rocket on a K805G. While Sam didn’t fly anything this time, she was a kick-ass LCO throughout Saturday and Monday morning. We had a good time, and it was cool to put “Wichita, KS” as my city and state on each flight card.
Since Monday, September 14th I have started my first job with Textron Aviation as a Process Engineer doing composites manufacturing assembly. I initially hired on into propulsion engineering back in October, but in July I was told that I’d be moved to a PE role due to company changes resulting from COVID19. I had no idea was process engineering would even entail, so I’ve come in with an open mind, and I’m pretty grateful to even have a job with the state of the US right now. Things are off to as good of a start as they can be; I expect it’ll be a few weeks or months before I learn enough to be able to turn loose. I’m told that as a PE I’ll be on my feet quite a bit which I’m grateful to hear; the less time behind a desk the better. I’d still love to work propulsion, so when things have recovered somewhat, maybe I’ll have an opportunity to see a role there.
