Florida - May/June 2012

Florida 2012

Thursday 31st May - Orlando airport is huge - I think it took us 15 minutes just to taxi to our terminal. I picked up my luggage (yay!) and my Kia Rio rental car (as I sort of expected- but it was still disappointing, the taxes, fees, insurances etc more than doubled the price I'd booked it for but I did resist the special deal to upgrade to a convertible, particularly with lots of rain around and a hurricane just having passed). I was assisted with setting up my toll tag by an attendant... I think I was meant to tip him... and then, having been up since about 5am I headed out into steamy Florida for my second ever experience of driving on the right.

I headed straight to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex for an afternoon of seeing the various exhibits; it was fun but there was a slight sense of "here's some cool stuff that we used to do" and "here's some life-sized mockups". I did the Shuttle Launch Experience ride which was quite good fun. I also noticed that the accents on some of the staff were so broad as to almost be caricatures.

I drove on to Cocoa Beach, where I Dream Of Jeannie was set. I had picked my hotel just because of a special deal with the airline, and it turns out that it's a little bit of a redneck holiday area, but the hotel was virtually beachfront and nice enough. After settling in a storm hit, and it showed no signs of passing; I dashed the few metres to my car, drove across the street to Denny's, and dashed inside - and was more-or-less drenched.

From Florida 2012

Friday - I started with my first ever swim in the very calm, warm & slightly muddy Atlantic Ocean under leaden skies. Then off to Disney World EPCOT - when in Rome & all that. I didn't have any small currency for the parking (about $15 or something I think) and the attendant didn't have change so she waved me though. The rain started with a vengeance and didn't let up until late in the afternoon, luckily I had a poncho so only my feet and shins got soaked while dashing between attractions. It was an interesting day, some of the attractions seemed a bit dated - but I enjoyed being flipped around at the end of a robot arm, and was delighted to hear the unmistakable sound of taiko from across the lake - I dashed to the Japanese pavilion and caught the end of the small performance. Good fun but in hindsight I probably would've preferred another day at Kennedy.

On the way home I started heading in the right general direction but couldn't find the right expressway and inadvertently went through Kissimmee (I recall a long, long neon canyon - so many malls and fast food restaurants!), Deer Park and Melbourne.

From Florida 2012

Saturday - as the sun beat down I headed back to the Astronaut Hall Of Fame for my Astronaut Training. There were about 18 of us enrolled, with a couple of family groups. We did various activities including some simulated shuttle landings, and my experience with the Google Earth flight simulator along with the fact that there was an odd number in our training rotation so I got to have a simulator terminal to myself and could practice everything twice as much, meant that I got the best scores for my landings and thus earned the role as Commander on our simulated mission, STS-309. We had a script to guide us, while the instructors threw a few unexpected scenarios at us. My Mission Specialists lacked a certain dexterity with their Robot Arm controls, and couldn't figure out the gas valves when we were all in danger of asphyxiating, and my Pilot didn't get the landing gear down until we were about 10cm above the runway and about to stall but we made it back in one piece. Our training concluded with a Q&A session with Shuttle astronaut Bob Springer and presentation of our graduation certificates. My ribs were still quite sore but they didn't hinder me in any of the activities.

I just had time to get back to the main visitor complex to take the KSC Tour which was amazing - the segmented Saturn V was absolutely huge and seemed so large to be incapable of movement yet the engines left you under no illusions about the incredible power they could unleash. From the lookout we could see the launch pads where humankind has launched itself into space. It was amazing - I'd be very keen to return one day and do some of the other tours, beside which I didn't get a chance to have a go on the centrifuge and it'd be great to see Atlantis when it's installed - and to see a launch would be brilliant.

I headed back to Cocoa Beach and stopped by the pier, a minor local attraction. I went for a drive to find some dinner and was very amused by the archetypal trailer trash couple in front of me in the queue at the gas station.

Sunday - I dropped off the car and checked in, using the Delta Airlines app on my phone as an electronic boarding pass - I was surprised how much better an experience it was to have one less thing to juggle through the checkpoints.

Impressions:
I'd been a little bit nervous about driving on the wrong side, and a couple of times a sanity double-check of every direction saved me from being somewhere I shouldn't, but there weren't any great problems.
I heard Gotye on the car radio a couple of times - "Somebody That I Used To Know" was on top of the charts.