The plan in Florida was to collect a car from the car rental in Tampa, spend that day with a friend of Barry's, drive over to the east coast and then boondock at a Walmart; the next day we’d go to the Kennedy Space Centre and after the day there, head down to Miami.
Once at the car rental, Barry had the closest feeling to a numinous experience he’s likely to get before we get to the religious communities of Alabama. We’d splashed out for a premium car on the Enterprise website, expecting a comfortable Buick. When the attendant gave us the option of the plain black Buick vs. a dark blue, arrow-sleek, 5.7 litre Dodge Charger... well, Barry had an expression somewhere between orgasm and winning the lottery. Driving a classic American muscle car around Florida will rate as one of the most awesome experiences of this trip, without a doubt.
After picking up the car we went to lunch with Gerald “G-Man” Gold and his wife, at Joe’s Seafood Cafe. Joe’s is a fairly expensive restaurant, typical for seafood I guess, it was the first time I’d had crab and the bibs handed out were a pretty good idea.
From thence we headed to a beach near Clearwater. The clouds had dulled the sun to twilight but the muggy heat permeated through. Rather than cloud-bathe there was a street break-dancing crew that we watched (they had a dance-off between kids and adults selected from the audience, the kids rocked, the adults sucked). The only problem with the beach was parking in the first place... there were plenty of spots going for free, all occupied, and further down the beach the hotels were milking the market at $20 a space. A retinue of spot hunters circled the car parks like vultures. We found a space in a parking garage that was going free at the time because of a grand opening promotion of the shop beneath.
After saying goodbye to Mr & Mrs G, we drove off in the direction of Titusville.
Walmart is a haven to the financially limited driver. For nothing, you can park (in a corner, away from the entrance please) and stay the night. The one draw-back is that we were in Florida. In Florida it’s hot, even in the middle of the night. After snuggling up in my sleeping bag with naught but an inch open on a couple of windows, we slept until about three o’clock... by that time, the accumulated sweat had drenched the inside of the sleeping bag (definitely a bad idea) and doused the windows. The fug didn’t help my already sleep-deprived brain, it took a while to get the command together to ventilate the car, wipe down the sleeping bag and get back to sleep.
Still early enough to feel sleepy but not so early that the sun wasn’t in full force, we set of at about 8 AM for the Kennedy Space Centre. The Kennedy Space Centre turned out to have the feeling more of a sedate theme park than a museum. After handing over a dear $45 – worth every cent in the end – the first thing I saw after the photophobic security was the NASA emblem in the middle of a court. After taking the usual pictures we headed to the rocket park (imagine the result of seeding a few engines in some really good solid fuel, pouring on some gasoline and leaving them to grow), and saw a little bit of a rocket exhibit before heading over to the IMAX theatre.
There were two films we watched back-to-back: Hubble, and the International Space Station. My love of Hubble is well known, I fall more in love with it as I see each new picture, as I fall more in love with Petunia as I get each text that signals one more day has passed before I return to Virginia on the 26th of September. Seeing the 2D images of Hubble re-rendered in 3D, seeing them tumble into real space, and having the perspective pull apart familiar gas clouds and constellations... it was heart-stopping. Something about the scale of space relative to the scale of humanity, combined with the apparent ease with which human kind has unravelled the workings of the cosmos, brings tears to my eyes when it’s made so clear: stellar nurseries in the Orion Nebula; deep-field images peering into a past so distant that measurements of time and space surpass all comprehension; even the iconic images of the plumes within the Eagle Nebula, autumnal patterned chimneys many light-years tall spewing dazzling stars and smoky trails in livid green and vibrant orange, even those reminded me of the solemn beauty and elegance of the Hubble endeavour... a 13.2 metre long synthesis of 11,110 kg of metals, plastic, ceramics and inorganics, with a little bit of human imagination.
Barry preferred the one about the ISS. I have to admit that the idea of zero-gravity crystals and the wibbly-wobbliness of liquids in space (and probably other things) make the ISS eminently more productive than Hubble in a practical sense (and those videos of water droplets being fed Alka-Seltzer are way cool). Seeing the construction of the station in 3D and the final design flying over the face of the Earth was cool and awe-inspiring.
Besides being humbled* beyond belief, the Space Centre offered a nostalgic blast from the past in the form of multiple Star Trek exhibits. I can say now that my behind has kissed the indentations left by James Tiberius Kirk’s own two buttocks on the captain’s chair of the bridge of the starship Enterprise – it’s a pity my engage warp finger point doesn’t quite measure up.
*Suggestion: I propose the induction of a new word into the lexicon of geekdom. ‘Hubbled’ – v., to be so humbled by the awesomeness of the scale, ingenuity and/or complexity of something to the point of feeling either drastically superior or radically insignificant.
There was lots more to be done than sit around in the captain’s chair all day. A bus tour around the divisions of the shuttle launch procedure – from the 525 ft, one-storey, construction complex, along the crawl-way, up to a viewing platform that overlooked the distant launch platform – also stopped at the Apollo Mission Control exhibit. A full replica of the Apollo 1 mission control room provided credence to a video narrated by Jim Lovell himself detailing what would have been happening therein as the first manned mission in the history of American space flight went through preparation and take-off.
All the talk of the size of the space shuttle and the rockets involved in that and other space flights was grossly insufficient to prepare me for the sight of a full Saturn V rocket, the full 475 ft of knife-edge engineering and science, segmented and suspended on its side inside the next room. Not even the largest rocket in the rocket garden (a Saturn II I think) was comparable in size. The engines of the first state alone were three or four times my height, probably more, and that was just one of them. As we learned later as the Shuttle Launch Simulator, the sound alone from the space shuttle launch would kill at 300 ft, and that’s not even using the Saturn V.
The shuttle launch simulator was the last stop of the day, if you don’t count the full-scale mock-up of Endeavour outside. Using a rollercoaster-like stage, the simulator approximated the vibrations and g-forces (as best as can be hoped without asking the rider to undergo 6 months of physical therapy) using vibrating seats and a shell around the stage that could rotation forwards 20 degrees or backwards 90 degrees. The description of the stages of primary ignition, twang (where the shuttle rocks back a little bit), secondary ignition, lift-off and then the separate stages of accent was an excellent way of building the anticipation. I needed to use the bathroom at the time.
In the 9 hours we were there, the Kennedy Space Centre fulfilled a dozen boyhood dreams and gave me a renewed conviction that the Apollo space missions amount to the most amazing achievement of human kind in all of history.
Writing all of that has exhausted me a little. I almost want to take a break before going on to Miami and Key West. But I can’t, Barry’s given me an hour before I have to hand this laptop back and I don’t know how much I’ve already expended.
The trip to Miami was another chance for us to enjoy the joy of the Charger. Once in Miami, on SW 2nd Ave, we were annoyed when it turned out that the website for the hostel had the address slightly wrong and our true destination was SW 2nd Ave, Florida City, a half-hour’s drive away. Thus we had the first piece of the case against the use of numbers for streets instead of names – I’m still in favour of numbers since walking NYC would have been a constant affair of map-checking without them.
Awaking in the hostel the next morning, we set off to Key West, for the most southerly point in the USA. It was my turn to drive... cruise control, unspoilt weather and minor traffic turned the 60-odd miles of straight road into an unadulterated pleasure. The sun was bright, the car accelerated like a hand off a hot stove, Barry’s heart attacks at my driving were entirely a result of an overactive imagination.
It took about 2 hours to get all the way. Each Key is separated by a stretch of road bridging the water between. The trees on land gave way each time to the sun-specked royal and baby blues of the Atlantic. A 2 hour drive felt like a cruise. Once in Key West we parked the car close to the first corner that showed the sea, finding a massive gum-drop pedestal proclaiming that we had reached the most southerly point of the US. It took about 20 minutes on the beach however before Barry realised that he had left his phone and his wallet at the hostel... I feel a smidgeon of guilt that it struck me as a little humorous that his face got redder and redder as I watched him search the car. It turned out ok because someone at the hostel had turned it back in and we went directly back to pick it up.
The hostel location mix-up meant we had to find another hostel for the second night since we needed to be in Miami to catch the bus on towards New Orleans. Actually only a couple of blocks from South Miami Beach, the Santa Barbara Hostel is a little cramped (three bunk beds per single-sized room) but it was filled with plenty of ex-counsellors and we went out for a good evening.
The next morning we split for the Greyhound station and set off for New Orleans.
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