Esther Dyson’s Flight School

Well, I’m back! I took a week off after the first Day 1 (or week 1, of medical tests) to take care of business in the US: paperwork and collecting medical files on the weekend, the Personal Genome Project on Monday in Boston, a colonoscopy and a gastroscopy, a heart calcium scan and an ear microflora assessment (because I have swimmer’s ear) on Tuesday in Houston, the WPP board meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Palo Alto, the 23andMe board meeting and a Zeppelin ride on Friday, a speech at the Singularity Summit on Saturday, and now I’m back in Star City for my current “real life.”

But I’m not where I expected to be: Instead of in Prophy 1, where Richard Garriott and the gang are presumably recovering from their flight, I’m in Prophy 2. The rooms here are somewhat nicer, but I’m all alone except for a woman whose only job seems to be managing the key to my suite.

Today I think there is more medical stuff, but I don’t really know. Marsel Gubaydullin of Space Adventures will show up at 9 am to take me around. But I have already started my new life. There is reportedly a swimming pool around somewhere; the last time I was here, they told me it was closed. So this morning, before I could discuss it with myself and after a nine-hour sleep (I arrived yesterday from California), I got up and went running – 25 minutes of run/walk, around a pretty little lake. I found Prophy 1, which made me feel good, and came back hot and sweaty and satisfied.

First battle over: I can find an alternative to swimming, though I know I was lucky today - no rain or snow, and it’s still light at 7 am. In the dead of winter, the sun won’t come up until after 8 am. Maybe by then I’ll have figured out the pool situation, or I’ll know my way around in the dark. Today, there was just a light frost by the lake, and the boggy parts of the path were damp rather than icy.

AND LATER THIS SAME DAY..

Ah, much better now! I did well on the bicycle test: My pulse doubled from 60 to 121 and my blood pressure went from 105/60 to 166/85 (does that sound okay?) and both of them came right back down again. I hardly broke a sweat.

Then we hustled over to another building to see the press conference for the returning cosmonauts: Richard Garriott, Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Volkov. Sergey is the first second-generation (Russian) cosmonaut; Richard is the first second-generation (US) Sergey’s wife and kid as well as his father were there; it was charming. But unfortunately Owen Garriott, Richard’s father, is busy working on follow-ups to Richard’s space projects and couldn’t be there. Photos on Flickr.

It was a cosy event. There were jokes about Richard’s going again, just like Charles. And Richard talked about his various space projects; one of them was to take photos of the same spots his father had photographed 35 years ago and to compare them… Those will be some interesting results!

After that, we headed back to Prophy 2 to pick up my things and move to Prophy 1. Prophy 2 is a little fancier and I had a suite, but Prophy 1 is the real deal; Richard is staying there now and Charles will move back in in January. The European Space Agency is around the corner on my floor, and NASA’s Star City office is on the second floor one floor below. Plus, I have a view of the lake from my single room (which is all I need).

And the internet is working, which is why this post is up!Thanks, Marsel and Denis!