Damn.

So Sunday morning’s low cloud cover scrubbed the STS-130 launch and delayed it until Monday morning.  Our seat-of-our-pants planning resulted in updating our reservation at Crystal Lake RV Resort until Monday, so we had no problem returning to our site (thoughtfully flagged as “RESERVED” by the kick-ass owner-operators) and slept until we couldn’t sleep any more.  And as a bonus to our aforementioned seat-of-our-pants planning we were able to upgrade our viewing tickets from the Visitor Complex to the causeway viewing area for only $42 ($21 per person).

Learning a bit through trial-and-error (and asking the same questions of every employee we talked to), we learned that that the parking lot doesn’t actually close and re-open, but rather that you just need a parking permit to be there after the Visitor Complex closes.  For those of us who live in an RV, this worked out well, as after a last minute drag race down I-95 to get the causeway tickets, we returned to Mims, packed up the RV, and grabbed a pole position in the KSC RV lot to nap for a few hours before heading in for our bus ride out to the causeway.

A couple of notes on the logistics of a launch, now that we’re seasoned veterans of two days:  First, the best thing in the world is a scrubbed launch.  It sucks to be out all night in the cold waiting for a launch that doesn’t happen, but so many people plan their flights home the same or next day (preventing any chance of attending a rescheduled launch)  that NASA releases a certain undisclosed number of tickets the next day.  Your ticket is mission-specific, not date specific, so anyone with Sunday morning tickets could have shown up Monday morning, but they have so much history that they can pretty accurately predict second (and presumably third, fourth, etc) attempt launch attendance rates.  Second, the tickets out to the causeway are “like gas cards” (best analogy ever; thanks ticket booth lady!) – once the shuttle launch is “go” long enough for the bus to take you out the causeway, it is used.  So anyone who went out to the cause way on Sunday morning’s attempt had to stop by the ticket counter to buy a new bus ticket for Monday morning’s attempt; first-come-first-served.  Which is awesome for those of us snubbed by the random-space-geek-selector on on January 6.  At 1:30 in the afternoon – “so late in the day” according to my new favorite retail employee ever – we were able to snag causeway tickets and make a trying night in the cold with other obnoxious tourists (they’re obnoxious; not us, of course) in to an awesome space-geek-bonding experience in a remote corner of a secured island.

Sunday morning was marked by sheep mentality.  Thousands of people sought entry to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex at the same approximate time.  We all needed to pass through security to make sure we weren’t trying to bring weapons, alcohol, or luggage in to the isolated area seven miles away from anything scientific.  This is accomplished via four doors leading to twelve (possibly more) operational turnstiles and metal detectors.  There was one line (door two, counting left to right) that went all the way out to the end of the parking lot and doubled back at least a quarter mile while the other three lines  were maybe a hundred people long and remained in the “entrance plaza.”  As much as we love sheep, we hopped in one of the short line which took about 45 minutes to clear the metal detectors and bag check.

Monday morning was s study in efficiency.  The same number of security staff were working – possibly less – and the doors didn’t open until two hours later (11:00 versus 9:00) despite the launch being scheduled for 25 minutes earlier.  We strolled up with no line so quickly that I felt it necessary to apologize to the guy at the metal detector because I didn’t have a chance to empty my pockets before I got to him.  Damn.

All the cold and misery of Sunday night was worth it when we got out to the causeway.  The KSC website describes the causeway as having no facilities, so we cut off our fluid consumption a couple of hours prior to avoid unpleasantness with the local alligators.  Once on the bus, however, our driver (B-squared, as he called himself) informed us that “no facilities” amounts to porta-potties, folding chairs, mercury lights, and concessionaires with coffee, tea, cocoa, snacks, and hot sandwiches.  In their defense, the concessionaires was cash-only.  That’s pretty low-tech, eh?

We were worried that the return buses would be chaotic, but they actually have one bus per busload, so there’s no waiting for a bus and ferrying back and forth.  We were on bus 32 and required to return ont he same bus.  (Our driver went so far as to give us a password to make sure nobody else snuck on his bus and left people having to stand on the return trip.  I love this guy almost as much as I love the ticket chick.)  Better yet, some combination between the lower crowd volume and our get-there-at-5:30-nap-then-enter-earliish strategy paid off; we got to the causeway early enough to be only one body back from the ropes and were able to position ourselves away from bright lights and with big gaps between shoulders of the people in front of us.  We set up the tripod with both still and video and settled in for a couple of hours wait.

There was a bit of a cloud ceiling concern, but despite the same percent chance of scrub (40%), the Air Force forecast anticipated a better likelihood of a launch window than last night.  They were right.  Clouds rolled in around 2:30, started clearing up around 3:30, and the T -9:00 countdown kicked off at 4:05.  Then . . . wow.

(Sorry the video is sideways; if anyone knows an app that can rotate a video file, please share!)

On January 6 we had an array of computers on line to increase our chances at dropping mad stacks of cash on quick-selling event tickets.  We had two missions: Kennedy Space Center viewing tickets for STS-130, one of the last five shuttle missions before the program is shut down, and reserved seats for the Kentucky Derby.  We scored both, despite both events selling out in minutes.

The Kennedy Space Center has three shuttle launch viewing areas open to the public for those who want to get closer than the beaches in Titusville or Cocoa Beach.  The Astronaut Hall of Fame never sells out, as it is the same distance (12.5 miles) from the launch pad as the beach in Titusville, but does not have a view of the pad like Titusville does.  The KSC Visitor Center, which is what we got, sells out pretty quickly, despite thousands of people being allowed in and it not having a direct view.  The coveted tickets to view from the causeway, an unobstructed view just 6.5 or so miles from the pad (a mile closer than the visitor complex) apparently sold out more quickly than the random customer algorithm picked any of our computers.

The launch was scheduled for 4:39 am, but you need to arrive before 11:00 because they close the road in to Merritt Island.  Fortunately, we called and learned that RV parking was available, so we considered bringing the rig in.  Rather than trying to pack up in the morning, we took the car down around 9:00 to check out the visitor center.

The visitor COMPLEX was far more expansive than either of us expected.  We were both anticipating the type of single building with a few kiosks of information that non-tourist facilities build so they have something to show tourists who show up anyway.  (See also, sea turtle rescue hospitals, condor refuges, Olympic training facilities, decommissioned prisons and hospitals, ghost towns, and so on.). Instead, the visitor complex is a really impressive cross between an amusement park, an aviation museum, and a science museum.  There’s tons of info on the history of the space program (and even more at the Astronaut Hall of Fame), two IMAX 3-D theaters, a space art gallery, a “rocket garden” with several retired rockets on display, a simulated shuttle launch “ride”, several kid-centric activities, and of course gift shops and eateries.  They also have bus tours that take you through the restricted areas to three remote sites; an observation tower which is closed during launch periods, the Apollo / Saturn V Center – with two videos covering the histories of the programs, the actual Apollo 8 command center and an awesome reenactment of that launch, and a full scale replica of the rocket – and the International Space Station Processing Facility – where they prep, test, and store all the modules that are brought to the ISS by NASA.

We did the bus tour first, then the Space Shuttle Experience simulator, and checked out all the outdoor exhibits,  but saved the IMAX movies for our nighttime return, given the five hour gap between arrival and launch.  We headed back to the rig around 5, packed up, hitched up, and returned to KSC around 9, only to find out that the info we were given about not being allowed to arrive prior to 9 was completely false.  We got a short nap before hopping in line to enter – at launches when everyone is arriving in a short period of time, there’s a much bigger bottleneck at security.  We watched the IMAX film on the Space Station, which was awesome except for the narration by Tom Cruise, staked out a spot under the model of the shuttle boosters, and then hung out for a few hours.

And then they scrubbed the launch due to the low cloud ceiling.  Nuts.  Try again in 23 hours and 35 minutes.

We headed back to our campground so we could plug in and sleep late.  The traffic was a bit annoying, but once we cleared Titusville it was fine and we managed to get back to our site – which the owners had thoughtfully put a “reserved” sign on so that no late arrivals snagged it thinking it was available – just before dawn.

We rolled out of bed around 1 pm and called the highly unreliable KSC phone information folks to clarify the info on their web site.  Since the site indicated that they were reselling some visitor complex viewing tickets, on a whim, we figured we’d ask if they were doing the same for the causeway viewing area.  YES THEY WERE.  Score, but you have to buy them in person.

So as not to waste any precious moments, we jumped in the car and drove down to the visitor center to try and snag some.  Our hastiness paid off and we were able to get bus tickets to the causeway – and didn’t even need to repurchase a viewing ticket as we assumed we would.
Since we were down there, we checked out the Astronaut Hall of Fame, which has a dizzying amount of history on the space program (including about 7 uses of the phrase “the Soviets were first again”) and several “simulators” which are actually more like amusement park rides than simulators.  Nonetheless, the G-force simulator didn’t sit well with Ceridwen (or maybe was just amplified by the fact that she hadn’t eaten since 5 am) so we high tailed it back to the rig, ate a meal of ambiguous definition, packed up the rig again, and drove down I-95 to Kennedy for the fourth time in 36 hours.  Hopefully we won’t see that stretch of highway again for quite some time.

We’re now sitting on the causeway for the second launch attempt at T minus 4 minutes 30 seconds and counting.

After Thanksgiving at my parents, we headed on down south just as quickly as we could.  We settled in at a RV park in Brunswick, GA, known to tourism advertisers as the “Gateway to the Golden Isles” – the Golden Isles, of course, being Jekyll Island, Sea Island, Saint Simon Island, and Little Sea Island.  (Some include Cumberland Island as well, but that’s off the coast of St. Mary’s, nearly an hour south.)

The park we’re at, Coastal Georgia RV Resort, is relatively new (Google Maps doesn’t actually know where the street address is yet and their satellite image provider only recently updated from a woodland to a construction site) but very nice.  It’s right off I-95 and behind a pair of truck stops, but you wouldn’t know it.  There’s a large lake that can be used for boating or fishing, large flat sites, and a new little subdivision being built to allow for safe walking or running.  Plus, we can see the price of gas by simply stepping outside and looking up at the Goasis across the way and we’re walking distance from a Waffle House.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

We have a tradition (meaning we’ve done it twice thus far) of getting together with Ceridwen’s family for Christmas a few weeks before Christmas.  Her parents live in New Hampshire and her brother lives near Atlanta with his wife and our two awesome nieces.  Since we live wherever we want, we all target a nice warm vacation spot within a road trip from the ATL and converge there at a rental property of some sort.  For the last two years we rented a house in Tybee Island, GA, just off the Savannah coast, but this year we headed further south and celebrated in Amelia Island, FL.

The house wasn’t as well maintained as the one in Tybee, but it was made up for by being right on the beach (instead of the three minute walk we had in Tybee), which came in handy as the weather was spotty.  We brought our bikes down and went for a few rides, played with the girls on the beach, baked cookies, and so on.  In short, a good time was had by all.  Ceridwen, her mom, and I headed in to Jacksonville on Saturday night to run the 1st Place Sports Festival of Lights 5k.  They do it at 6pm with the course lit by luminaires and jingle bells tied to people’s feet.  There was some disorganization in the packet pickup (like missing bibs and switched timing chips) but for the most part is was a very fun event and all problems we knew of were resolved.  We even got back in time for bedtime!

A couple of weeks later we headed down to Orlando to interrupt my parents’ vacation for the weekend.  They were staying at a friend’s condo near Universal Studios and had a spare bedroom so we were able to visit and have a lovely weekend with them.  We had a great time, caught the Epcot fireworks from the balcony one night, spent a day at the Harry P. Leu Gardens, and generally had a good time.

We even went so far as to plan what we’re doing when we leave beautiful Brunwick, GA.  (shock!)

Continuing our fine tradition of updating this site far less frequently than we do in our heads, we’ve already left New Jersey!  What originally seemed like an eternity ahead of us flew by rather quickly as all our weekends filled up!

We stayed at a park in south Jersey,  just a bit north of Atlantic City, called BlueBerry Hill, as it was the only one we could find that was a reasonable distance from my parents and open past Halloween (if that late).  They were a nice park with a great staff, but suffered from a lack of communication that proved to be frustrating.  Apparently, what the corporate reservation office didn’t tell us was that the water gets shut off shortly after Halloween.  So, for the first few weeks of November we bounced from our original, full hook up site to a “winter water” site with no sewer, to their sister site in Buena (pronounced “Byoona” – we kid you not!), which, it turns out, is open year-round and for whatever reason completely evaded our initial search for a park!

We hit Atlantic City a couple of times; first for a Social Distortion concert at the House of Blues, then for a daytime exploration of the boardwalk.  Atlantic City off season is quite possibly even more depressing than your average off season beach town.  The entire place is so dilapidated, even the new construction looks like it’s already been forgotten and faded away.

For Halloween we headed in to Philly for Dracula’s Ball.  We had gone once before a couple of years ago and it was a lot of fun.  This year lived up to expectations even though we hadn’t heard of the bands this time around.  The only bummer was getting a parking ticket after successfully finding a legal parking space.  We were too far from the curb and didn’t bother to correct it due to the on-and-off rain and the chance of makeup running.  The dangers of Halloween.

Ceridwen upgraded her jewelry displays and did well selling her Wanderlust Bling wares at a couple of local holiday craft fairs the first week of November.  Both were indoors and significantly less traumatic than the maelstrom that came down on her first craft fair in Eugene.

We spent last weekend in Philly where Ceridwen ran her first (and, as of her current opinion on distance running, last) marathon despite a painful stitch in her side for a majority of the race.  It was tough, but she pulled through and completed it.  I’m so proud of her – she’s probably sick of me telling her so.

The whole plan was to spend Thanksgiving with my parents, but Ceridwen came down with a severe fever a couple of days after the marathon, so while we helped with preparations the day before and morning of, we had to skip out on Thanksgiving dinner before the rest of the family arrived.  We also had to cancel plans for getting together with friends on Thanksgiving eve and Friday on our way through Virginia.  Thank you all for your understanding!  We hope to see you soon!

It’s now the middle of the night on Friday night (actually, Saturday morning) and we’re parked in a roadside RV park in Selma, North Carolina.  It’s surprisingly quiet and well appointed for something right off the Interstate.  If you ever have the urge, RVacation RV Park is worth considering for more than an overnight.  (And so close to the world’s largest cigar store!)

Why am I up?  I’m on call for work this weekend and a customer of mine decided that Friday night at midnight is a fine time to upgrade his servers.  I’m actually rather surprised he’s the only one so far.  Anyway, he’s all set but I can’t fall back asleep.  That’s the down side of being on call I guess.  I’m off to try again.  Greetings from North Carolina.

So, uh, yeah. We’ve certainly been remiss in updating anything here on keathandceridwen.com. Again. It seems to be our way. We’ve got a couple dozen Alaska videos that are still too big to stream which we need to compress and upload again, plus all sort of other things that should be uploaded, but for now we’re going to the old truism: “Live in the now!”

So, we’re in New Jersey.  Port Republic, to be specific, 15 miles north of Atlantic City.  This is unfortunately too far south to pick up WSOU or WFMU, the only New Jersey stations that matter, but well within the range of Temple University’s many WRTI repeaters.

After visiting Michigan back in July, we headed in to Canada and stayed for a few days outside of Ottawa before heading south in to New Hampshire where we spent the late summer and early fall.  For those who don’t already know, New Hampshire is the last place that we lived in a stationary home.  Ceridwen was born and raised in NH, after she graduated from college we got married in NH, and shortly thereafter we bought a house in Concord, NH.  (We then proceeded to get very sick of shoveling snow in NH, buy a conversion van in NH, sell most of our worldly possessions and said home in NH, and move in to the aforementioned van to flee NH.)

So, in short, New Hampshire is where our peeps are.

Thus, we didn’t do much sightseeing.  We didn’t explore.  We didn’t go hiking.  We didn’t photograph landmarks.  We just caught up with old friends and hung with Ceridwen’s family a lot.  It was good.

We did dig through our storage unit to make a couple of large donations to Goodwill (and more than a few bags of trash) and pull most of our remaining CDs that haven’t seen the light of day since early 2005.  Of course, we did this on race weekend – when the NASCAR Sylvania 300 comes to NHMS – and our storage unit is not called “Speedway Self Storage” without due reason.  Great planning, eh?

We were also up at NHMS earlier in August for the State Police D.A.R.E. Classic 5k Road Race, which was a very fun race where you get to run right on the track (two laps, including the motorcycle track).  While there, we spotted a couple of nuns running in full habit and learned that they are the “Running Nuns” of St. Charles Children’s Home, a home in in Rochester, for kids from “families in crisis.”  The nuns hold their very own 5k on Labor Day, which we also participated in.  And just to round out the good causes, we also headed down to the Wild Rover Pub in Manchester, for their Half Way to St. Patrick’s Day 5k.  The 5k raised money for the local Police Athletic League, but they also had a St. Baldrick’s Foundation (an organization that raises money to fight children’s cancer) head shaving, which I participated in.  We decided to participate less than a week prior, but friends and family donated $133 to St. Baldrick’s.  (You can donate year-round, if anyone is interested in either “supporting my head” or just donating to the foundation directly.)

We made a couple of road trips.  First, one down to Boston to see the New England Revolution play the San Jose Earthquakes.  The Earthquakes are apparently the bottom of the league, but it was a fun game and we were able to get great seats.  It was also nice to be able to see Gillette Stadium without having to deal with Patriots traffic and crowds.  Rev’s games only use maybe a third of the sections.

The second road trip was down to Pennsylvania to see our friend Jason get married.  They put together a really nice weekend, complete with paintball the day prior (golf too, but that’s not our thang).  It rained almost all day, except for a three hour window when the skies cleared up and everything dried out just long enough for them to have a beautiful outdoor ceremony.  (The downpours resumed about twenty minutes in to the cocktail hour!)

Apparently, during the last week of September, we got swine flu.  Not fun times at all.  Ceridwen got it much worse than I did, so on October 3, she spent the day helping her dad replace the well pump that had blown at their house while I went up to Bristol to run the New Hampshire Marathon.  Needless to say, I didn’t do too well just four days after being sick, but I finished in just over four hours, which isn’t too bad considering the rain made me cold, wet, and about 10 pounds heavier due to all the layers I had.  It is, however, a beautiful run, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a New England marathon next year.

On the 11th we finally picked up and left New Hampshire, as it was beginning to get quite chilly up there.  We took a detour route out to Windsor, Vermont for the Harpoon Brewery Oktoberfest, where we ran a 3.6 mile road race in absurd “German” costumes before heading south on I-91.  We got to beautiful Port Republic, New Jersey shortly before midnight.  And here we are.  We haven’t really explored much yet, but we’ve found the grocery store and some safe places to run.  Plus it snowed in NH on Monday.  That’s what I call perfect timing.  Let’s hope NJ holds out long enough.

Because Keath works the 11-8 shift and we’re now in EDT, we have moved our touristy activities to the morning rather than the evening.  It’s pretty fun and it’s a good way to avoid crowds and the heat of the day.  On Monday we went to the Lake Huron Boardwalk in St. Ignace and walked around watching the fog roll in and recede.  Nothing too exciting, but it was fun all the same.

Yesterday we took the ferry to Mackinac Island to ride our bikes, hike the trails and buy the requisite fudge.  The residents of the Island call tourists Fudgies because everyone buys fudge before they leave the island.  This may be due to the fact that every other establishment sells fudge.

We got into town and rode our bikes around the perimater of the island.  There are no cars on the island, which makes for great biking.  We stopped and saw all the sights – an Arch, Skull Cave and the Devil’s Kitchen.  When we got back into town we walked up the hill and wandered around some of the paths for awhile until it was time for our ferry back to St. Ignace.  Unfortunately I misread the schedule and the 10:30 ferry did not exist, so we had to wait for the 11.  Ah well, it meant we had time for a beverage at the Pink Pony Pub.  Woohoo, pink ponies!

We didn’t really set out on this journey to see every state of the union, but as we traveled, we learned that it’s sort of something RVers keep track of.  RV stored even sell little vinyl maps of the US to keep track of where you’ve been.  Everyone has different criteria for what they count before filling in a state, ranging from simply passing through, to spending money somewhere other than a gas station, to actually spending the night.  We never really planned our routes based on a checklist, but it’s fun to track, so once we’d decided to do the Alaska vacation, we figured we might as well swing through North Dakota and Michigan on our way back east.

And now we have.  Yesterday we left Madison, Wisconsin after watching the broadcast of Whad’ya Know? and picking up our rig from getting an oil change, we headed north, through Fond du Lac1, Green Bay, and eventually crossed the border near Marinette, WI2 in to Menominee, MI.  And so now, by the standards of having stepped foot in, and spent money off the highway in every state of the Union, we’ve been to all 50 states, 48 of them since selling our house in May of 20053.

Friends and family have challenged us to now do all 13 Candian provinces and territories, the 6 inhabited U.S. Territories and Outlying Areas4, every country in Europe, or just all 50 again this time via bicycle or foot.  Thanks guys.

We’ll stick to wandering as we see fit; despite having been to every state, we’ve only seen a tiny portion of what each state has to offer.  So, we’ll just have to keep finding new nooks and crannies of the country.  Or continent.  Eh, the whole world.  Until we can afford to hitch a ride to the moon with Richard Branson.

Anyway, after an overnight stay in the western portions of Hiawatha National Forest, we took a boat tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Lake Superior, then headed across the Upper Peninsula to Saint Ignace, where we have an awesome site overlooking Lake Michigan, and are a short drive or mid-size bike ride over to Lake Huron. Perhaps we should check off Great Lakes while we’re at it…

I’ve Been Everywhere.
2.  Where we finally succumbed to the call of Wisconsin cheese with free samples (and the requisite tasty purchases) at Seguin’s Cheese.  We recommend the garlic cheddar.  Or just about anything else that strikes your fancy.
3.  Rhode Island and Maine apparently need a “modern” revisiting.  We should remedy that shortly.
4.  Which does not include Kingman Reef, an unincorporated and uninhabited territory that is not legal to visit.  So, there, Brian!