A little north at Cocoa Beach. Earth First! (We can strip mine the rest later.)
Cocoa Beach: my old home town. Well, sort of. Actually, I lived in Cape Canaveral which is the other side of the sign. That place has really changed.
Ron Jon's is now an entire shopping mall instead of the little shack when I lived there. The entire stretch of woodsy beach is now overgrown with condos. The port is unrecognizable. There used to be wide open spaces to practice with boomerangs and whatnot, and places to fish along the canal. Now it's packed to the gills with cruise ships and you have to pay to get into Jetty Park.
The space center has turned into a cost center. It used to be "free" (that is: paid for by taxpayers) but now costs, like, $30 just to get into the place. It's still worth visiting, but yikes, I paid for it once already.
Still, my parents still live just south of there if you need someone to show you around.--The three things that make a diamond also make a waffle. [ Parent ]
I lived on Orlando for 4 years in the 70s. One of my first visits to Jetty Park was to watch the Voyager 1 launch in 1977ish. I remember having just enough time to lament that we were too far away to hear the sound, before it got there. Now? Voyager 1 has crossed the solar wind termination shock. Wow.
"And this ... is a piece of Synergy." --Kellnerin[ Parent ]
Netflix doesn't have it, otherwise I would suggest we make toxicfur sit and watch Cape Canaveral Monsters. (A bit overrated at 2/10 stars.) But it does star The Moon Hut. Ah, the Moon Hut. I miss that. I miss Fat Boy's and the Knot House, too.--The three things that make a diamond also make a waffle. [ Parent ]
I was at the Cape for the launch of STS-93, which, because of the orbit we wanted, had to go at night. It got scrubbed two nights in a row (one at T minus 6 sec), so eventually my boss decided to go home again and gave me her VIP pass. Very very cool, watching a shuttle night launch from just 3 miles away.
I recall boarding a flight the next morning in Orlando, with one of my colleagues, who, because of his membership in the ops team had the then-equivalent of a blackberry on his hip, reporting from two rows behind me, (and with 6-10 other project people within earshot) that the booster had fired correctly. "We have a mission," he said.
Otherwise, it would have meant going home to compete for space on the moving van they would have had to back up to our doors to haul away all the resumes.
