Day 4895

I made it to Florida. It's been a long day. We got up early and took Dawn on her sunrise walk. While I was eating breakfast, the roofers came over again to clean up and load their remaining supplies. I continue to be impressed by these guys. The roof is finished, but they didn't forget about cleaning up the job site. They did such a good job this morning  that you'd never know that they'd spent the past three days making the yard look like a tornado hit it. The roof itself looks great. We got some rain last night and there are no signs of any leaks. I really hope that I can put all my roof problems behind me now. If I never have to climb up on the roof again, that would be fine by me.

After breakfast I packed my bags. I think I could do this in my sleep by now. Every time I make these trips to Kennedy Space Center I take exactly the same things. I have a small bag full of connecting cables for computers and cameras. I have another small bag full of pills and toiletries. I take enough clothes for an extra day or two. Launches get postponed so often that you have to plan for contingencies. Everything fits in a small carry-on bag and the camera bag fits under my seat. Packing is easy. Trying to remember if I forgot anything is a little harder. It's easy to forget essential things like reading glasses and toothpaste. I always take a raincoat now after getting caught out in the rain without one once. I don't think I forgot anything this trip, but I never know for sure until I can't find something I really need.

Airports are weird. Spend several hours in an airport and you've got a pretty good bird's eye view of what's going on in society. Today I saw pilots with red hang tags on their luggage saying "We're ready to strike," I saw a small crowd surrounding a group of police officers trying to arrest someone. The crowd was shouting "Don't touch him" over and over again. I couldn't figure out who's side the crowd was on. Were they worried that the man being arrested would get injured, or were the worried that the officers might get dragged into a protracted lawsuit if they touched the guy. It could go either way. People are constantly eating at the airport even though the food is ridiculously expensive. I was kind of hungry, but I didn't feel like buying a nineteen dollar hamburger or a six dollar bag of chips. 

I think Love Field in Dallas is the best airport in the country for going through security. You don't have to take anything out of your bag anymore. Even computers stay inside your bag while they are being scanned. You still have to empty your pockets, but you can leave your watch and Fitbit on your wrist. Everyone reminds me that my driver's license is about to expire. Thanks guys but I can still remember a few things. Actually, I've got an appointment to renew my license next week.

It's going to be a long day tomorrow. I have to pick up my press credentials at 5:45 AM. This means that I have to get up even earlier so I can drive to the press office. We get to go out to the launch pad at 7:30 AM to set remote cameras and take pictures of the rocket. The afternoon is filled with interview opportunities and the launch itself is supposed to take place at 5:37 PM. If the weather holds up, this will be a beautiful launch. Sunset launches are the best.

I'd better get some sleep and make sure I set several wake up calls. It's a shame that Axiom has such a small window for picking up credentials. If you're late or miss the window, you are out of luck. Hopefully everything stays on schedule. The weather looks promising and I haven't heard about any problems with the rocket. We'll see what happens.

Harley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 4633

I said goodbye to Florida today. I still have mixed feelings about missing the launch, but I don't think I had much of a choice. When the Artemis team moved the second launch attempt from Friday to Saturday afternoon I lost my Airbnb because my host had new guests arriving. 

Truthfully, they weren't wild about me even staying until Friday because they need to clean between guests. I promised to check out super early. I was going to check out before the Friday attempt and then drive straight to the airport afterwards. 

Since the launch is now scheduled to take place on Labor Day weekend, there are no hotels either. Lots of people are traveling. The hotel situation definitely hasn't gotten better since Monday's launch attempt. The guests may have changed but the hotels are still booked solid. I didn't think sleeping in the rent car was a good option. It gets quite expensive to spend this much time away as well. Too bad I can't find a magazine that pays my travel expenses.

I enjoyed returning to the space center, but I didn't really feel like I belonged with the journalist crowd. Usually I just hang out with the local rocket photographers when I'm attending a launch. The national reporters and journalists who came down for this high profile launch were from a completely different world. It was a world I had little interest in joining.

Maybe I'll see a future Artemis launch if they can ever get this one off the ground. Yesterday's readiness briefing didn't give me a lot of confidence. The launch team was going to tweak a few things but were basically going to go through exactly the same procedures they attempted on Monday while hoping for better results. If they succeed this time, I'm going to regret my decision to return home. Did I make a mistake? Hey, quite a few people I met this week actually did sleep in their car. 

I did enjoy my Airbnb experience. My hosts were extremely nice, the place was spotless and was located in a nice quiet neighborhood. It made the Holiday Inn I used to stay at look pretty shabby. After I checked out this morning, I drove to Orlando, returned my rent car, and followed my normal airport routine. I got a banana and strawberry smoothie at the food court and then got my 10,000 steps for the day walking up and down the concourse. You can learn a lot about America by spending time at an airport. We are definitely overweight as a nation. The only skinny people I saw were from other countries. We are also an affluent country. There were lots of people taking their entire family to Disneyworld. If you've got four or five kids, that's an expensive vacation. There are a lot more wheelchairs in airports these days. When did this change? Do these wheelchairs mean that the country is getting sicker, or that the disabled are regaining their mobility? Probably a little bit of both.

Dawn was glad to see me when I returned home. She did well at training class tonight too and came home with another blue ribbon. Tomorrow she gets her teeth cleaned. We take her to the vet right after her morning walk. I'm tired. I'll unpack tomorrow, maybe start to write my article and keep wondering why I came home so early.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 4486

It's been a long day, but I made it to the airport on time, had a smooth flight to Orlando, drove to Cocoa Beach to pick up my press credentials, and then checked into my hotel in Titusville. I wasn't able to get a rent car with GPS this time, but luckily I know my way around the area by now.

I ran into several people I know while I was being credentialed and they suggested that I go to Playlinda Beach this evening to get some good pictures of the Artemis-1 rocket while it was sitting on the pad. It sounded like a good idea to me, especially since I didn't have anything else to do this afternoon. I had to renew my annual pass to get into the Canaveral National Seashore, but they have a special senior rate that is quite reasonable. The National Seashore is beautiful and I always enjoy visiting there. There were several areas near the water that had a clear view of launch pads 39a and 39b. It was amazing how much bigger the SLS rocket was on 39B than the Falcon-9 on the nearby 38A. The Artemis rocket is huge. Hopefully, I will get some better pictures tomorrow, but at least I got something today.

Since I don't go to concerts or sporting events, airports are about the only place where I see a lot of people.  I'm not a big fan of crowds and seeing a cross section of humanity like this is kind of frightening. It makes me appreciate my solitary existence. There's certainly nothing glamorous about flying anymore. It's kind of like taking the bus. Now that everyone has decided that Covid is over, airplanes are full. I enjoyed it more when the airlines blocked off the center seats in early 2020, but those days are over. Flying is a zoo again.

The clerk at the Hertz counter told me that none of their cars have in-dash GPS anymore. Evidently it is no longer a desired feature, since most people use their phones for everything. I ended up using Google Maps on my phone to find where I needed to pick up my credentials. It worked surprisingly well, although you can't really see your phone while you are driving. I still like an in-dash GPS system a lot better. Who would have thought that a GPS in your car would end up being old-school and only appreciated by old farts like me.

Tomorrow looks like a busy day. We get to go out to the launch pad and take some close up pictures of the Falcon-9 rocket. I think that Axiom Space is having a press conference in the afternoon as well. A lot of the space photographers set up remote cameras near the launch pad, but I've never had the nerve to do this myself. I've heard too many tales of cameras getting ruined by everything from rain to rocket exhaust. Some photographers build special enclosures to protect their cameras, but these tend to be heavy and bulky. It's not something you'd want to fly with.

I did pretty well at remembering what to pack, but I really should have brought a pair of shorts. When I was out at Playlinda Beach this afternoon it got pretty hot. It's hard to think of every contingency, especially if you like to travel light. I did bring a raincoat which will come in handy if it rains tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be nice for the launch on Friday though. I'm hoping that the forecast is accurate this time.

I wonder if Dawn will miss me while I'm gone. I suspect not. I bet she's already claimed my spot on the bed.

Paxton is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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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

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Day 3364

Today was interesting. Actually it was pretty amazing. I got to sit inside an Orion capsule that will be taking four astronauts back to the moon. I got to drive a moon buggy simulator used to train a new generation of astronauts. I got to experience a very realistic virtual reality spacewalk around a space station that will someday orbit the moon. An active duty astronaut explained how a special low gravity simulator was being used to train people to walk and work on Mars. A NASA geologist showed us rocks that Neil Armstrong collected on the moon. This all happened at the Johnson Space Center in Houston where I and several other lucky people were the guests of NASA for the day.

I'm really glad I was able to accept the invitation to get a briefing on NASA's plans to return to the moon and beyond. It was weird to see the last remaining Saturn 5 at Rocket Park and realize that it's been fifty years since anyone was serious about returning to the moon. It looks like the day has finally arrived. I was amazed at how far the planning has come in recent years. The work going on at Johnson Space Center is very impressive

I haven't traveled in a while, so this seemed like a really long day. I got up early, flew to Houston, spent the day at the Johnson Space Center, and then returned to Dallas this evening. A lot has changed since my last travels. Everything is done using your phone now. I booked my flight on my phone. My boarding pass was displayed on my phone. There was even a coupon for a free drink on my phone.

No more waiting for taxis either. I found an Uber driver to take me to and from the space center using my phone. It was all easy and surprisingly affordable. Even tips were handled electronically using the phone. It's weird how quickly all this has changed. Probably the next time I take a trip, there will be self driving cars.

I was going to get something to eat at the airport, but I ran out of time. I didn't anticipate how much rush hour traffic and long lines can slow things down. I didn't miss my flights, but I came pretty close.   I should go without eating more often. It's probably the only way I'm ever going to lose weight.

Janet said that Dash did fine while I was away. I hope he was glad to see me again. It was good to get away for a little while, but I'm not all that eager to rejoin a world of traffic jams and long lines. It's easy to forget just how busy the world really is when you're not rushing to get your shoes back on before your plane boards after a lengthy TSA check at the airport. A world of slow walks with your dog in the park is much more relaxing. Tomorrow, it will be back to drinking fruit smoothies and cleaning up dog poop, but today was pretty special. Thanks for a great day NASA.

Tyson is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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