An Evening With Bill

Ethan has been watching Bill Nye the Science Guy since he was 2 years old. We have almost every episode on VHS thanks to it's 1998-99 run on PBS here in Portland. Jonah and Isaac have also become Bill Nye fans and enjoy watching our old tapes.

So, when I heard that Bill Nye was coming to Portland to talk about Volcanoes, specifically Mount St. Helens, I knew this was an evening I could not miss. I immediately purchased tickets for me and the kids. (Robert had to work: surprise, surprise.)

In my dreams, we would be sitting in the front row and Bill would choose Ethan to help him with experiments. After the show, Bill would take time to talk with each of my kids and I would have the ultimate nerd photo op and my photography skills would be great and my camera settings would all be correct and I would have the most amazing photos to post and the most amazing experience to blog about.

While this ultimate dream did not come true, we had a fun and entertaining evening watching Bill do his science schtick. The best part of the whole evening had to be the look on the boy's faces when Bill walked out onto the stage. Their eyes were wide and their smiles big. I wish I would have taken a picture.

In fact, I didn't get a single picture of the kids the whole evening. I was a little star struck myself and couldn't stop taking pictures and videos of Bill. He was great.

Here's the set-up for this little video clip: Bill used the Vortex Generator of Science (the box) to blow out a candle from across the room. Impressive! Then he asked us to predict the shape of the air that was coming out of the Vortex Generator of Science. Was it a cylinder shape? A bullet shape? A teardrop shape? We never could have guessed what the actual shape was, and I think we were all very impressed.

At the end, the boys went down to get an autograph, along with every other kid in the audience, but unfortunately Bill was done and no autographs would be signed. No ultimate nerd photo op for me either, unfortunately. (Oh Bill...)

Still, it was totally worth driving into downtown in highway 26 traffic and running from our parked car to the Episcopal Church in the pouring rain (Jonah and Ethan! I told you to bring a coat with a hood!) to see Bill Nye the Science Guy.