Much Ado About Fifteen

Feels like it's been forever since I've written anything here.  I doubt anyone noticed.  Well, YOU did, I know.  But everyone else.....not so much!

I'm on 'vacation' currently.  Which in my case, just means that I've taken a week off of work, mostly because I can.  And, my fifteenth wedding anniversary was this week as well.  For this auspicious occasion, we returned to Mackinac Island, which is where we were married those fifteen years ago.

We were twenty five years old, we'd known each other for almost exactly 8 months.  We didn't tell our parents we were doing it.  And we differ now on whose idea it was to actually get married at that time.  I insist it was me, and she insists it was her who pushed for it.  Which is pretty funny.  I guess that means that we both wanted to, which is good!

Six other people were there with us.  My sister and one of my best friends, a close friend from work and his wife, and my 'boss' and his girlfriend.  My boss was pretty much my best friend at that time, so don't look at me like that! 

We arrived at St. Ignace for the ferry to the island, with not much time to spare.  We hadn't bought flowers for my wife to be, and she was insistent that we have some.  So after hitting some of the local stores, and coming up empty, we were driving along the main road, when my woman cried out "Stop!".

So I did, and she hopped out to the side of the road, in the middle of town mind you, and started picking flowers from the city flowers!  Flowers, and dirt got thrown into the back seat, and she jumped back in and we took off.  She assembled her bouquet from those flowers, and it looked quite lovely.  See below:

We were married in the garden of the Windermere Hotel, by a local preacher.  It was short, and sweet, and awesome.  The rest of our lovely day there on the island, was a long horse drawn carriage ride around the entire island.  Led by a very flatulent horse, of course.  We had our wedding dinner at the Yankee Rebel Tavern there on the island.  Most delicious, with strawberries and Dom after dinner.

At some point, we ended up with two visual souvenirs of the day.  One was a simply awful caricature drawing, pastel thing.  Didn't look like either of us I don't think.  The other, was to be our 'official' wedding photo I suppose.  It was at one of those vintage photo places, where they dress you up in vintage looking clothing, and pose you with props and things, so it looks like it was a hundred years ago.  Taken with old single shot cameras.  Twenty bucks a pop I think!  Each couple ended up with one, which meant four or five different shots.  My good friend from work took great happiness in doing a slightly different version of the stern bartender for each shot.  My wife and I were the newlyweds. Her in a very old looking lacey wedding dress, and I in a grey suit, with a top hat and cane.  We were told not to smile, and to look very serious.  Which we all did, except for my friend's wife.  She smiles like sunshine for every shot.  Which was awesome too.  

The wedding night was spent in a tent, in a campground in St. Ignace.  The marital consummation was performed with joy, but little comfort, as we had not discovered the modern air mattress as of yet.

And fifteen years on, we returned to the island, with our bicycles, and three children.  Visited the butterfly house, had lunch at the fort's Tea Room, and mostly were really tired out.  It seems the hills of that island get no easier as you grow older!

In fifteen more years, I hope to do it again.

Go At Throttle Up

As I sit here, watching the video feed of the final Space Shuttle landing that will ever be, I reflect upon the thirty plus years that I've noted this space program.  MY space program, if you will.  I'm 40 years old now.  The Shuttle program was started in the early '70's.  So just as the Mercury and Apollo programs were what I consider to my parent's space programs, this one, is mine.  Or my generation's.  However you choose to look at it.

There have been so many triumphs with the Space Shuttles.  The validation of the whole concept of the reusable space vehicle.  All the wonderful space repair missions.  The assembly of the International Space Station.  So many wonderful things.  Yet, as is my bent, I recall much of the tragedy as well.

When I was in  fourth grade, we all gathered in Sister Catherine’s Learning Lab, at St. Thomas Aquinas school in East Lansing.  She turned on the big projection screen television.  And we all watched excitedly, as the Space Shuttle Columbia climbed into the sky on it’s fiery tail.  I was totally in awe of the spectacle.  It didn’t make me want to become an astronaut or anything, but it definitely got me interested in such things.  My father bought me a plastic model kit of the Columbia, which I put together, painted, and hung from my ceiling over my desk with fishing line.  I had it cranked up in a reentry attitude.  And I looked at that up there for many years. 

Like most people, I followed the NASA shuttle program rather casually.  When something big happened and my attention was brought to it, I followed it as close as the next guy, but then life took over my attentions, and I forgot about it for awhile.  Such was the Shuttle Program.

The next thing I remember vividly about the program, was from 1986.  I was sitting in Coach Smith’s Freshman Algebra class, when the announcement about the shuttle Challenger explosion  came over the PA system.  I was shocked, and I didn’t concentrate on anything for the rest  of the day.  It was made more real, and horrifying by the news coverage that evening at home.  The horrible pit  in my stomach as I watched the video for the first time, knowing that something was about to happen.  Then that fateful moment, right after the call for main engine throttle up, when the Challenger exploded into a geyser of fire.  The booster rockets going on their merry way, spiraling up into the sky.  Mission control still dutifully calling out telemetry, long after the explosion.

Then the horrible playing of the explosion, over, and over again.  As analyst after analyst talked about it, and examined the tape.   Much like the awful repetition of Joe Theismann's leg injure only a few months before.  The media loved showing it again, from a different angle every time.   Of course, we all know what happened now.  That "25 cent" O-ring around the solid rocket booster section, burned through, and shot flames right at the main fuel tank.  And nothing good comes of that.  Preventable, and a design flaw,, to be sure. 

But the biggest thing I remember, and that I dream of sometimes, is that last call out from the orbiter to mission control:  “Roger, go at throttle up”.  Then the explosion.  The pieces of debris falling, endlessly it seemed, to the ocean below.  The later determination, that the crew was possibly alive up until the crew module smashed into the water, didn’t help make it any nicer.

I was at home on that Sunday morning in 2003, when the Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry.  I latched onto the live news coverage right away, and watched it for hours.  With great dismay.  I felt the urge to find the mission patch logo from NASA, and I took great care in printing out a large 1 ft long sticker of it.  I took it to work, and placed it on the back of my toolbox, something that was not allowed.  I did it anyways.  I wanted to look at it every day for some reason, remind myself of the risks of doing such things I guess.  I was working for Pratt & Whitney's experimental flight test division at the time, and it seemed appropriate.  Over the following months, the sun slowly bleached out all the color from my homemade sticker.  I sort of liked that.  It mirrored how our minds let tragedies fade away, until they are less horrible.  Eventually, it was a blank outline of the logo, and I scraped it away.

Once again, that accident turned out to be preventable.  Caused by insulation falling off the main fuel tank during launch, hitting the leading edge of one of the shuttle's wings.  That’s the way of it though.  Most accidents of that nature can be prevented.  We just don’t have the foresight to see that something is a real problem sometimes, until it is proven to us.  We are like that, as a species I think.  Rather optimistic. 

The risk is always there, whenever you get into your car, ride your motorcycle, take an airplane, or even get into a rocket ship.  We know that things can go horribly wrong for a myriad of reasons.  But we go anyways.  Optimistic that things will work out ok, and we will be able to do whatever it was we wanted to do.

I look forward to seeing what the private companies can do with spacecraft launching, and exploration.  I am heartened by what I see so far from companies like Space X, and Virgin Galactic.  I will watch their progress off and on, as in the past.

Hoping to never again hear the fateful  dead air over the radio, that came after “Go at throttle up”.  Like it did that one day in April.