Day 4284

I said goodby to Florida today. I wouldn't want to live there, but I love visiting the Space Coast. I'm starting to feel like a local in Titusville. This sleepy little town has a lot of charm. Almost everyone has some sort of connection to Kennedy Space Center. Many people who worked on the Apollo program retired there. I've met people who worked on the giant F1 engines on the Saturn 5. I met someone this week that was a seamstress who worked on Thermal Protection Systems for the Space Shuttle. My server at breakfast this morning told me that her mother used to work for NASA, replacing broken and damaged heat shield tiles on the shuttle. "She was the smallest person on the team, so her responsibility was to replace the tiles in difficult and hard to reach places," the server told me.

I seldom watch television when I travel. I don't even turn on the radio in the rental car. If a hurricane was headed our way, someone would tell me. Nobody talks about politics though. If I meet an older person, we reminisce about the past. I've learned a lot about the Apollo program from Titusville residents. If I'm talking to someone younger, we speculate about what's going to happen next. A lot of conversations involve Elon Musk. I don't really do that much talking. Just more than I do in Dallas. 

One thing I've noticed while traveling is that most people can't handle silence. They are constantly on their phones, texting friends, listening to music, and staying connected through social media. Even out at the Press Site yesterday, a lot of people spent more time looking at their phones than at all the amazing things surrounding us. People feel deprived and get fidgety when they can't use their phones on the plane. I'm convinced that addiction to personal electronic devices is a disease that's right up there with alcoholism and drug abuse.

You don't realize how grossly overweight Americans are until you spend an hour walking back and forth in an airport trying to get your 10,000 Fitbit steps. Do these people even realize that their weight is a much bigger danger to their overall health than the threat of Covid? Weight and diet are intrinsically linked. Nobody eats healthy food either. There's a huge food court at the Orlando airport and the longest lines are always at the unhealthiest places. Even pilots and doctors eat at McDonalds. There are birds flying around inside the Orlando airport. I can't tell if they are a design feature or a nuisance. Some of the birds have a pretty song, but birds poop a lot and their favorite place is the food court.

Some observations about Florida: it's a lot like Texas but with alligators. In both places if someone passes you going twice the speed limit, it is almost always a huge pickup truck with a lift kit and gigantic tires. Florida has road signs that advise you to slow down for snakes. It is so humid that your skin never feels dry. It seems to rain every single day in Titusville, but usually only for a few minutes at a time. Roads are always under construction in Florida. When the work is finished, things are usually even more confusing than they were before. On the plus side, Titusville has some great local craft beers and the nearby National Seashore is a treasure.

By the time I got on the plane this afternoon I was ready to return home. Have you noticed that every airport has their own TSA rules these days. Some still make you take off your shoes. Others don't. Going to Florida I could leave my laptop in my bag. Returning to Texas, I had to take it out and place it in a separate tray to be scanned. There seem to be different rules about liquids everywhere. I can leave my watch on my wrist in some airports, but most still make you remove anything even resembling metal. It's confusing to say the least. 

Dawn was friendlier to me when I returned home this time. We'll see if she will take a walk tomorrow morning.

Phantom is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day