Gratitude and Fortitude

Back north to the Canaveral area, water dripping from my snorkel. And at this point I must share with you some things about the motorcycling community. Many motorcycle clubs maintain a list of members who express interest in helping fellow travelers. Before I left, I looked in a couple motorcycle club lists for a member in the area I wanted to travel to who might be willing to put me up. 
I have a theory that shared experiences unite people, and the more intense the experience, the stronger the union. I treat this a bit in my games articles (go to ezinearticles.com and search for my name, Rogers George). And long-distance motorcycling is certainly an intense experience. So intense that you don't even have to do it together to create the tribal unity I'm talking about. My time in central Florida certainly bears this out. I found Randy Stallings.

Randy is a big fellow (think a tall Jack Riepe without the arthritis), single, and has a nice place in the center of a tangletown development. (I was thankful for my GPS to help me negotiate all the turns) That's the garage on the left; house is behind the trees. Sight unseen he opened his house to me, letting me have the run of the place for about four times longer than I had planned on, letting me take him out to eat occasionally as a meager thank-you. I got to meet another MTF member, and Randy's folks, a very sharp couple. He didn't feel that he needed to entertain me, which I appreciated (in fact he paid me what I consider to be high praise—he said I was unobtrusive) but we went to the beach one day when I didn't need to go to the space center, and he had gotten home about when I  finished my daily job-hunting session. We visited the world's largest surf shop and ate someplace full of local color.  Sorry, guys, I didn't bring my camera to the beach. Just a bunch of young kids in their teens and 20's anyway.

Which brings me to the space center, the original rationale for this trip in the first place. Because I didn't have a job to return to, I was able to hang around the area for several days, waiting for a mission not to be scrubbed, and I got to know the space center pretty well. Some of the staff even got to know me, and I took hundreds of pictures. They're on picasa, arranged more or less logically, and with lots of comments. I invite you to take a look. http://picasaweb.google.com/rogers.george. Unfortunately my long lens broke (leaning over a railing taking a shot of a turtle—the end fell into the water. Unrecoverable. So I had to take the launch shots with the wide-angle lens, but at least I was there!

The repeated delays had at least two effects: the size of the crowd diminished, and (apparently) the PR people started to feel bad. The day the launch finally took place they opened up the VIP/family area to the public—for the first time ever. This location is only three miles from the launch site, across water, so the view and sound are as good as you can get. The only humans closer to a launch are in emergency vehicles. I set the camera to auto and got a pretty good series of the ascending shuttle.

A relaxed hour after launch I was on I-95 headed north. Traffic wasn't bad, and I got to GA before I felt the need to take a nap. My style on long rides at night is to nap twice. I awoke about 4AM from the parking lot where I had spent the night, and took my second nap just before sunrise at a rest stop. This fellow looked like he took his nap in the middle of a repair job—I saw wrenches lying about. It's amazing how comfortable concrete can be, and he apparently felt the same way I did about it, though I picked a less conspicuous spot for my nap.
After that it was pretty much a straight shot north through the Carolinas, Richmond, DC (terrible traffic, even not at rush hour), Baltimore, and home. I pulled into the driveway at the crack of 5PM.

Distance: more than 3200 miles, cost: several hundred bucks (including tire and helmet), no brushes with traffic cops, no accidents or near misses. One goat alongside the interstate that I didn't have time to photograph.  All the energy bars Val packed were a good thing. Next time: bring better bug spray, maybe a helmet camera. Stay with Randy Stallings if I can.