Today was a Bucket List Day . . .

Okay, I know I've been neglecting this blog horribly for the last six months, and I'm very sorry. I'll do my best to change that in the near future.

That said, I've got to tell you about my day today. You see, today was a Bucket List Day.

Not that I have a Bucket List per se, but there are definitely things I've got in the back of my mind that I want to do "someday". Happily that list isn't as long as it used to be. Things like "fall in love" and "live happily ever after" were crossed off the list when I met Scott; and together we've accomplished a few other items such as "attend High School reunion with same-sex partner and watch the reactions" (to the credit of my classmates, the reactions were overwhelmingly positive), "visit Paris", and "stand on a Broadway Stage" (sadly as a guest not as a performer, but you take what you can get).


For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by space flight. I remember being a kid in the early 70's and watching the big rockets on television as astronauts were going to the moon. When the shuttle had to be diverted to White Sands Missle Range in New Mexico and I was in grade school, I begged my parents to let us skip school and drive the mere seven hours across New Mexico to see the shuttle because it would likely never be that close to us again; and in High School I actually did stay home from school to watch the Challenger lift off, sadly it never made it into orbit and became the "where were you when . . . " moment of my generation.


So one of my "someday" things has been to see a space shuttle launch. Since we moved to Florida six years ago, we've seen several launches from our house. But that's just the bright rocket glare at night, or the smoke trail during the day. I wanted to actually SEE the shuttle itself at the top of that flame and smoke as it blasted itself free from the Earth's gravity and took astronauts to the stars (well, if not the stars, at least the space station). The scheduling was always off for us to head east and watch the launches, though.


Until today, that is. Wait. Let me backtrack a few weeks. We knew that this was our best option to see a shuttle launch due to it's mid-month timing a while back, so we planned to buy tickets to see it from the NASA viewing area. A couple of weeks ago, Scott got up early and logged into the site's "virtual waiting room" and waited to be randomly allowed to buy tickets. The prime launch location tickets were sold out in under two minutes! And the secondary viewing area was sold out in 20 minutes. We were out of luck. Several of the tickets showed up on eBay within the hour priced as high as $1000 per person, (marked up from the $58 that NASA sold them for. Let me just say now that I hate the people who bought tickets, not because they wanted them, but because they decided they could milk the people who DID want them for insane amounts of cash. There is a special level of hell reserved just for them.) we decided that purchasing tickets from scalpers on eBay was not in our price range, so we started looking for contingency options. We booked an overpriced hotel room in Titusville, FL (the town across the waterway from Kennedy Space Center) and began researching locations. There are several locations in Titusville where the shuttle launch is clearly visible, and we decided to try for one of those.

So last night, Scott picked me up from work and we drove out to Titusville and checked into our hotel. Then we drove along the waterfront part of town checking things out. We found a house with a bunch of signs offering reserved parking spaces for shuttle launch viewing with the proceeds going to charity (More description of this set-up will follow in a blog entry tomorrow or Sunday). It sounded like a great deal to us, so we forked over some cash and reserved a spot for the morning, and went off to dinner.

This morning we got up WAY too early, had breakfast and headed back to our reserved spot. We got there right at 8:00 am (for the 2:20pm launch time) and grabbed the last spot right on the water. Looking across at the space center, we could see the launch pad! All we had to do was wait.

It was hot, it got crowded, and I got midly sunburnt. But at 2:20pm today, I crossed an item off my bucket list.

Atlantis lifted on on her final mission and it was a beautiful thing to see! Pictures just don't do it justice. I was giddily laughing and crying at the same time. The shuttle arced to the left as it began to track toward it's orbit to meet the international space station and then the sound hit us. And the rumble. We could FEEL it! It was amazing. The crowd began to clap and cheer, and I was transfixed. It was SO FUCKING COOL!

Eventually the shuttle was no longer visible, and the crowd slowly dispersed (we were finally able to leave our parking space two hours later) and the normally hour long drive home took nearly three hours.

We're sunburt, we're exhausted, we're punchy, and we're in agreement that it was TOTALLY WORTH IT!

So that's where I'm at. One less thing on the bucket list. Not sure what I'll tackle next . . .

In the meantime, what have you got on your bucket list?