Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Good Luck to the Truck

Hey kids! Discovery is a happy shuttle.

I am a happy blonde. I have some fantastic nausea going on that I have not experienced in over two years. It is launch day.

In four years, I have bounced Cape to Orlando to Daytona Beach; space education to tech writing to kinda-space education again. Because combining monomethyl hydrazine with nitrogen tetroxide has a very great deal to do with producing a good paragraph, today’s class is turned over to exactly the type of presentation I used to give in the very shadow of the shuttle. Also, since I enjoy highly uncomfortable two-hour car rides as much as the next person, some of my students will accompany me to the launch today. It is always nice to fulfill the original reason for a 969.27 mile move.(I bought this poster at the employee gift shop in the headquarters of Kennedy Space Center in 2001, never dreaming that I'd live in all three cities pictured here. If you look very closely, you can see me careening about State Route 528, screaming at toll booth attendants.)

Space education is a use-it-or-lose it affair; facts I used to spit out sitting bolt upright out of a dead sleep are now located in the neurons storing such information as who played second base for the Reds in 1984 and the lyrics to “Baby Got Back.” This has resulted in a great many frantic emails to Nick the NASA Poobah for review purposes (“Um. What do they call the thing on the launchpad between the ground and the big grey tower again? You know? That thing?”)

Most missions do not begin on the original launch date. Chances are we will return to Daytona Beach with full rolls of film. I do not care. It is launch day again.

Thinking of you today, Columbia, at mb@blondechampagne.com

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