Month: January 2016

I’ve heard a lot of people say, “I remember exactly where I was”. I don’t. I had to have been at home, but I don’t remember being there. I do remember what I saw and saying aloud to nobody but myself, “What just happened?” I think that’s how everybody felt, including those who were suppose to know what just happened.

30 years ago, January 28, at 11:39 a.m. EST people around the world all said the same thing, “What just happened?” With seconds ticking into minutes, one by one reality washed over us. Challenger had just exploded. It was not the first space exploration disaster and it wouldn’t be the last, but the loss of those seven lives…we all remember.

I have always been in awe of astronauts. Who hasn’t? Being an astronaut is the brass ring of all job titles, affording you a swagger beyond Maverick in Top Gun. It’s awesome! I would love to be an astronaut, sort of, if it didn’t involve hurtling through space at 18,000 miles per hour on the back of two rocket boosters and a solid fuel tank that sounds dangerous from the get-go, because it is! I have to take Dramamine to board an airliner! Outer space may be a step or two beyond my comfort level.

I spent five years chasing the shuttle. “Scrub”, “Scrub”, “Scrub”. I hate that word! I slept on the floor of Ben’s (son) dorm room for a week in hopes of getting to see the launch of Atlantis, only to have it all end in “launch scrubbed”! Once Mariah (daughter) and I were halfway to Cape Canaveral when it was announced on the radio, “shuttle launch is scrubbed for today”! In 2011 Mariah, Dusty (son-in-law), and I sat for five hours at Space View Park in Titusville, with what seemed like a million other people when word came, “launch scrubbed”! Uncle!!! I get it! It’s not meant to be! Kim (husband) would be disappointed for me, but he would be happier to keep what was left of our savings intact for a rainy day, not another launch day! At that time we were still living in Colorado, so my mission was getting to be an expensive one.

July 8, 2011 was to be the last launch of the space shuttle…ever! The end of an era! I decided to skip it. I had already made too many trips to capture this elusive bird. If it happened, I would watch it on television, but Ben and Mariah protested! “You can’t! You want it too badly! It’s important to you! You’ll be forever disappointed if you don’t try!” So, one last time I boarded a plane to Florida, to try. This time was to be “the” time. I saw it! I felt it! There are no words big enough. I shared the experience with Mariah. She couldn’t have cared less about the space program or the shuttle launch, but she knew it meant the world to me. I stood there beaming, with tears running down my face, watching Atlantis disappear out of sight, and then marveled at the rumble that followed long after she had escaped. Mariah hugged me tight. Her face was beaming too! It’s been almost six years. My eyes still overflow and my throat tightens just thinking about it.

Ben, while working for Signature Flight Support, was awarded the opportunity of a lifetime. On April 19th, 2012, the day before his 26th birthday, he towed the space shuttle Discovery nose to nose with the Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy, Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, while former Discovery commanders walked alongside. When he was interviewed about the experience he got the same choked up throat and brim filled eyes that I have. He was to be a part of taking Discovery home; NASA’s workhorse, the oldest and most traveled shuttle, an icon that had flown 39 missions, to look closely upon her skin and see the battle scars of space…what an experience, what an honor.

On February 1, 2003 at 9:12 a.m., 17 years after Challenger, almost to the day and time, our nation would lose Columbia and seven more astronauts. The nation mourned and I believe we still do, but we honor those who have gone before by going again, each time a little farther. Astronauts eagerly await the completion of Orion. The next manned spacecraft. Why? For science? For discovery? Why for the adventure, of course! To go out there. Through them, I get to go too.

 

 

 

It was 5:30 when Kim & I were awakened by the sound of a strong wind driving heavy rain. Moments later all that was light went dark. The power was out. The storm that we had been warned about was upon us. And now a new sound. What is it? Where is it coming from? It’s an alarm and it’s coming from the phone. “Tornado warning! Take shelter immediately!”

This is Florida, not Kansas! Where would you suggest we go? It’s not like we have basements here! The water table ranges from one to six feet and this storm was promising to make the water table above ground, not below it! So, what do we do? We do what everyone does who didn’t grow up in the midwest. We look out the window! Just what did we think we’d see at 5:40 in the morning with the power out?

I decided the best course of action was to put some clothes on. If my home was going to blow away in the next few minutes, and I was going to be homeless, I needed to be dressed. Made sense at the time. Still makes sense, but what I did next does not. I crawled back into bed. Kim never got out of it! Oh don’t lecture me! I know what we should have done. We should have climbed into the bathtub. It’s the center most part of the apartment. The center most part of the building. That would have been the smart thing to do until the danger had passed. Somehow it didn’t cross my mind at the time. Being cozy in bed when we ended up in Oz did.

By 7:00 the storm had begun to settle, but the aftermath was just beginning. Let’s address the immediate problem. No power, which means no coffee! Things are serious! A breakfast of cold cereal and then we needed to begin thinking about how to handle the coffee situation. One of the neighbors had made a coffee run for him and his wife to the 7/11  a few miles away that had a generator, and a line out the door waiting for the same thing!  At some point we’ll need his justification for failing to take coffee orders from the rest of us! A serious breach of neighbor etiquette! A short walk around the neighborhood revealed a few bigger problems than coffee, though obviously a hot cup of joe would go a long way to being able to deal with the situation more clearly.

Palm fronds had been stripped from trees and were littering roadways and sidewalks. Two palm trees had been sliced through at ground level, as if they had been cut by a saw. One lay on the ground. The other was teetering on the brink of disaster waiting to happen, braced against another tree. One palm tree had its top half blown off. I have no idea where it ended up. Large oak trees had branches snapped and two had been completely uprooted. Pool furniture had been blown around and upturned. Debris was everywhere and that was just our neighborhood. A transformer had blown up and power lines were down all over the county. We live very near the the Naples airport, where wind gusts were measured at 83 mph. Planes had been blown around and Judge Judy’s jet ended up on its tail with its nose in the air. A jet! Naples was a mess and there is plenty of work to be done to clean up, but fortunately no one was hurt, not here anyways.

Now for lessons learned. When there is a tornado warning, move immediately to the bathroom! Don’t get dressed, close the blinds, and go back to sleep! When the weather service warns that a severe thunderstorm is coming, they mean “severe”! Time to gas up the car, if for no other reason than being able to go in search of coffee while you wait for Florida Power & Light to get everything up and running again. After all, there are priorities!

2016 has just begun and it seems to me that we put way too much pressure on a fresh calendar. “It’s going to be a great year”, “Can’t wait for 2016”, “Thank goodness 2015 is over”, “I hope 2016 is better than 2015!” In fact, 2016 is just a year. It’s what we put into that makes it what it is.

Remember all the excitement and trepidation that went along with the turn of the century? The year 2000! Some were absolutely sure this was the end of civilization as we know it. Computers just were not equipped to read the date. There was going to be a worldwide crash! What would happen? The possibilities were endless, the results catastrophic! What happened at midnight that fateful day, 16 years ago, was a toast to the end of the 20th century, a kiss to welcome the 21st century, and in the morning all felt pretty much the same as it did the day before, because it pretty much was.

Then there was 2012! The end of the Mayan calendar! This was it! The end of the world! Ordinary people were searching the heavens for the great meteor that would put an end to our little blue ball in the solar system we call home. Not that anything was ever written saying 2012 would be it. The end! Just that the Mayan calendar only went that far. Talk about jumping to conclusions! The Mayan civilization was amazing and far advanced beyond the period of time in which they flourished, but it pretty much fell apart around 900 A.D.! For them 2012 would have been reaching so far into the future as to seem ridiculous. For me, I’m not throwing in the towel based on the last calendar created by people who never thought to develop indoor plumbing. Then again, there was a short moment of pause, followed by a double take, when the head of a small statue, a Mayan replica our daughter had brought back from Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, fell off and landed on the dresser. It didn’t break into pieces. It just lay there at the feet of the figurine like an ancient ruin. The date, January 10, 2012. Hmmm?

Now it’s 2016. I haven’t heard any dire predictions for this year. No great expectations. I suspect this year will be what we make of it. For some of us it will be filled with great blessings, adventures, love, and happiness. For others there will be trials, challenges, overwhelming sadness, even grief. For most of us there will be a mixture of both. It’s a blank slate just waiting to be filled up. 365 days lined up in a row to be lived. What? Wait! Make that 366 days!  Leap year! A bonus day! Turns out 2016 is pretty special after all!