Jeff came back with a great story of an encounter with a cowfish. You really should read his journal if you haven't already. The one downside of being out so early though was coffee. Being a diuretic, I had to rinse my wetsuit very thoroughly after the dive. What really made my day was having my feet firmly planted in front of "The Big Picture." I've seen the ISS-hookup on our schedule and I knew that it was a link with the International Space Station, 250 nautical miles above the southern Atlantic. But, to sit next to a speaker cell phone and actually converse with Astronauts and Cosmonauts in the space station was, to say the least, humbling. As Jeff, Greg, Jonathan, and Danny caught up with their colleagues in "the station," as they call it, I found myself staring at a picture of Jeff on an EVA and wondering about the people in the weightless space station. Did they have to hold on to the walls to stay close to the phone? Were they in their space suits or just in regular sweats or something? Was it really like a phone or some kind of special comm box, or what? It sounded like they were keying a microphone to speak. I could go on.

After I thought about it for a while I started to realize what we were doing. For man to go out and explore not only our world, but others as well, and to overcome the infinite, small, annoying snafus that can hold up a mission or dream, only to push ahead and persevere is astonishing. We've come so far with our technology, and to see it used in such beneficial ways, as living in the ocean to understand how to take care of our planet and to live in space to better understand our solar system, expand our knowledge of the universe (and our own planet), is motivating (to me!) and I hope inspiring. I really see the big picture! It's no longer a question in a lot of our minds whether or not we will go to Mars. It's a question of when! We're learning new ways of exploring the deepest parts of our oceans and are finding them as strange and foreign as other planets! And to realize that in some small way, I am a part of all this, really makes my day. I got all this from a phone call. The things we take for granted…