Up, Up, and Away

I'm updating the pictures on this blog slowly (these pictures are from February). This is the last launch of of the space shuttle Discovery.

I ended up watching the launch quite by accident. I had offhandly told a colleague that I would spend a day at the beach just for fun. He responded with, "Don't you know that the shuttle is launching tomorrow?" So I ended up driving to Titusville, FL, which sits across the bay from Cape Canaveral to watch the launch. I got there at 11:00 am (the launch was planned for the late afternoon), and struggled to find parking. I finally parked in an empty lot near a vacant restaurant; it was one of those shady on the fly parking spots where you're not sure if the person you are giving your money to is actually the owner of the parking lot or just some crook making good on the absence of parking.

I parked, gathered my stuff and walked across the road to the "beach". It was more like a marina. I claimed my spot with a good view of the launch pad (okay, I imagined it was a good view of the launch pad). I had several hours to wait for the launch and nothing to do but read and eat strawberries (such is the difficult life I live!).
Those hours would have been perfect if I could have just subtracted the sun and a chain smoker upwind from me. (I would have moved away from her, but the place was crowded, and I feared losing my prime shuttle-watching real estate.)

Of course, I should have known that I had actually chosen the wrong place to sit since as the time of the launch grew closer a boat launch in front of me got so crowded with people that I couldn't see a thing. Hmph. I ended up wading out into the water and watching from there.

The shuttle launch was amazing. I loved standing out in the water with everyone else who waded out there too. I loved the sense of shared expectation and wonder. After constantly wondering when the big moment would arrive, I finally was able to see this little speck of light and then the plume of smoke growing underneath that light. As I watched the shuttle go up, I got goosebumps. I felt this mixture of awe, delight, and pride. What an amazing thing it was to see!

Then I was forced quickly back to reality when I got back to my car by the fact that it seemed like the whole state of Florida and half the country had come to the beach.
After traveling a whole three miles in one hour (it was so slow people were throwing footballs in the median while their friends inched by), I decided to stop somewhere to eat to wait out the traffic jam. I felt quite proud of this decision; well, that was until I had to go the opposite way of traffic to find a place to eat, and ended up backtracking those precious three miles that I had just gone.

I found a Japanese restaurant and ate there while watching the traffic move slower than a person could walk. I ate then whiled away the time calling my mom until my phone died, and then I had nothing better to do than go home. It took me another hour to retrace the three miles I had lost. After what seemed like eternity, I broke free from the pack and found a freeway free of traffic. I got home at 11 pm (6 hours after the launch). I was grateful for the 60 seconds of awe, grateful to have seen one of the last launches of the shuttles, grateful for a day off, and positive that the experience would not be repeated.