OBSERVATORY + THE F-ING SON OF EINSTEIN

 
 

Zach and I are big NPR geeks. We stream it on our phones even now during our camp-stove-cooking, tent-packing, French-press and oatmeal mornings. NPR has a little blip they do called Star-Date and it comes from the McDonald Observatory/Universty of Austin, its all about astronomy and which planets are where and doing what…We’ve heard it thousands of times over the years; so when we saw that there was a WarmShowers host AT the McDonald Observatory we were STAR STRUCK! Ha. Its true, we even incorrectly thought we might see Sandy Wood, who is the woman who presents Star-Date. Anyway—geekery aside, it was awesome.

Zach and I rode from Marfa to the observatory, a relatively short day (~40mi) but we climbed a small mountain to get there. As you might be able to imagine, the very last mile was the steepest and the most ass-kicking—a hard way to end a day, but satisfying.

Our host, John Khune works there—part of the cadre of staff that keeps the telescopes and equipment running; the astronomers sign up for time and come and go, but the core staff live there and keep everything working. Tolerances are tight, if a mirror sags even “½ wavelength of light” the whole damn thing is garbage. Its pretty crazy. John's background is geology, but he has a stunning mind for just about everything as far as I could tell. One of these people who remembers the numbers and dates and names of ever piece of information they’ve ever heard. And he was a sweet man to boot. Took us up for a private tour of the telescopes and all that. It was a real treat, a highlight of our trip, up there with crawfishing (but totally different of course…). John said that one day a bunch of motorcycle guys had ridden up to the observatory and saw him walking down—one said to another that guy looks like the fucking son of Einstein, then noticed he’d heard and assured him it was a compliment. I was glad he told me that because I was thinking the exact same thing, and I meant it as a compliment too. In my head.