Cocoa beach 2019

Cocoa Beach 2019

Sun:
As usual airports are madness. Always relieved to be on the plane and ready to go. 5 hour direct flight to Orlando from YYC. Flew on the Max for the first time, it was very quiet inside, quite impressive. Worked on it a lot of course. The only annoying thing now instead of the constant hum of the engines is the constant chatter of everyone onboard, even with earphones on. Stephanie was our main FA, and she was friendly and fun.

Got there, grabbed our bags and rental car, drove to Cocoa Beach (about an hour) got checked in and then realized we had not eaten all day. So we set off for something to eat, ended up at the BBQ restaurant, decorated like a 50's restaurant and had the largest burger I've ever had...LOL. It was really good.

Mon:
First thing is breakfast, loved the continental pancake breakfast machine. Fascinating. Should get one for home. Dawn had to drag me away from it, I'm like a kid in a candy store with machines. We decided to hit the beach right away, weather was beautiful and it's literally a 200 foot walk...changed and headed down there. 20.00 will get you two chairs and umbrella for the day. Kinda funny, people would just come along and sit down on someone else's chair and then the chair guy would come out of his hut and inform then no pay no sit. Muscle bound well tanned long hair total beach bum kind of guy. How do I get that job? The pigeons were annoying, not helped by the mennonite women and children who decided to start feeding them...

As this was our first day we spent a lot of time on the beach, also looking over local things to do, just sorting ourselves out and then finally we had a very nice supper at the Florida Fresh grille. It was excellent, and expensive. At least our dollar has some value these days.

Tues:
Spent entire day at Kennedy Space Center. It wasn't enough. WOW what an amazing place..so much to look at and see and do. Absolutely staggering to see the history, the machinery and what people went through. Had tour of the assembly area The Saturn V they have laid out on its side is just staggering to see in person....I mean to strap yourself to that thing and head out is just beyond crazy. It is insane. And for someone like me to see the construction, fittings, how they did things, how they built it, what it's made of, all the technical aspects are all very interesting. If you are ever in the area you have to go, give yourself a full day minimum. For some reason it seemed like EVERYONE today wanted me to take pictures of them with their own cameras...at one point I had three couples lined up and I would take their picture, hand them back their camera, then next couple would hand me their camera and I would take their picture, and so on. No idea what that was all about, Dawn laughed though.

Wed:
In the morning we wandered around a bit after playing with the pancake machine again and did some shopping. Bought some dress shirts, then arrived back at motel to find a door knocker that had a 20% discount for that store on them. Doh! Debated going back to try and get the discount but didn't. The person in the store was funny, one of the shirts was made of a certain material so I asked her what the benefit was of that, and she pulled out her phone and googled it then read it to me. I just looked at her and said "I could have done that", figured she might have known and was just standing there anyway. She probably figured I was technology challenged... LOL

In the afternoon we loaded up the rental car and headed to the Valiant Air Museum. Wow this area has nice roads and highways, smooth and clean, not like our shell shocked and frost heaved roads we bounce around on up here. Anyway, finally found the place. Lots of neat aircraft there, lots of people there too which is good to see...some were working on the aircraft as well, all volunteer of course. Couple jets I had literally never heard of before. Talked to a guy named Gem Golden who flew F8's in Vietnam, was in the Navy for 20 years, he was telling me how they used to dive right at the upcoming SAMs and then pull out hard near the ground to avoid them "That'll make you pucker!" No kidding!! When he found out I was an aircraft tech by trade, he took me on a more or less personal tour and into the back to see some of the things they were working on, F4 phantom, etc. It's interesting how they end up with these aircraft, how they get parts, etc...lots of inside connections helps make it happen. Glad to see this stuff on display, the history of aviation really is fascinating. They do have airshows there once a year, place is run on volunteers and donations. So I bought more shirts I don't need just to help out after such a great tour, and we headed back.

Back at motel we decided just to order pizza, it was good, kinda greasy maybe but that knocked us out and we were sleeping by 930pm.

Thurs:
Beach day! At the morning breakfast while I was admiring the pancake machine again (I mean really, you just press a button to tell you how many you want, it squirts some batter down, that all rolls along a conveyer belt with lights and action and stuff going on, and out the other end comes a perfectly cooked pancake), one of the motel staff made the announcement that a falcon 9 launch date had been bumped up and it was now tonight! So that changed our plans a little bit...we decided to go check out the area and see where we might watch this. The marina seemed like a good spot, obviously a boat on the Banana river would be perfect but we saw no signs of anything like that, perhaps it was short notice. The Marina was interesting all on its own. Anyway, we drove further up the highway onto a roadside turnout and found a little trail that headed down onto the shore of the river, the launch would be right across from that. It was located behind some trees and kinda hidden too so we figured that was perfect. Made a mental note of how to get there with the car and headed back to the motel.

Once back at the motel we noticed it had not -once again- been cleaned. So Dawn called the front desk. They assured us it would be done by 3:00pm. So off the beach we went.

Three guys on the beach in jeans and long sleeved shirts, one had an orange purse, every time the water would come in they would all back up then move forward when it went out. Weird.

When we came back later on around 3:30, yup, still not cleaned. Dawn calls front desk again and is assured it was late but would be cleaned by 4:30pm. So we decided to go have early supper as needed to get out and see the launch. After supper we came back and yup still not cleaned. This time Dawn went to the front desk and talked to the girl there in person. She was assured it would be cleaned today. So we packed the car and just as we were about to leave a guy showed up at our motel door with towels and some boxes. Obviously not regular cleaning staff but at least we would have some supplies finally.

We headed down the highway to our spot we had picked earlier. There were already some people in the area, nothing near us. Drove the rental car down the embankment and parked then walked the short distance to our spot. It didn't seem so friendly as the sun went down...LOL had a rough idea what time it would launch, however I did not know there is actually an app for tracking space X launches....anyway, about 10 minutes before launch time, a couple showed up from *** I don't know where *** and without being rude let's just say they fit the hillbilly mold pretty well. Awesome accents, funny teeth, both drinking beer and smoking (so who is driving the Beatup RV?)...etc. Think the Griswald's relatives...LOL Suddenly there is a bright light across the river and it just filled the sky, you could see it start to lift and head up and then finally we got some sound, but you could hardly hear it for all the hollering and whooping from our new neighbors. Got it on video, comments and all, maybe I'll post it up, pretty funny. Also very neat to watch that rocket go downrange and even though we weren't that close, it was very impressive.

As I aimed the rental car up the embankment I realized that it had felt so sloppy coming down as it was very sandy...there were some deep ruts too and car was getting stuck so I pinned it but also watching for traffic on the highway as it was picking up after the launch and of course going by at 80 mph but then there is suddenly a boulder in our way so I had to avoid that and swerved and car started sliding again so aimed it up higher -hope we don't roll- and we came flying out of embankment onto the road and picked up speed on the shoulder and finally merged with traffic ...LOL Dawn didn't say anything, pretty sure she wanted to. It wasn't extra dangerous, just dangerous. We have travel insurance :) Rental cars :)

When we got back to motel I checked car for obvious damage, then we went in and discovered the guy who had cleaned our room obviously did not want to come back again, he left like 35 little shampoo bottles on the counter, loads of toilet paper and a bunch of extra towels...LOL Maybe the rest of the rooms got skipped this time...LOL

Fri:

Final walk on beach. One of the last things I saw was an old man , probably about 80, wearing a speedo and riding a bike down the beach. I mean good for him keeping active and all but Damn. How do you unsee THAT???

Loaded up, checked out. Drove to Orlando international, returned rental car and got into the terminal. Once there had a bite to eat and listened to the fire alarm test: "Attention ladies and gentlemen we are currently testing the fire alarm system please disregard all signals”...well they are hard to disregard, flashing strobes everywhere, a constant whooooooop, whoooooooop horn and lights flashing, that constant message over and over and everyone just ignoring it all. WHY would you test this at 3 in the afternoon??

Saw my first Chick-fil-A restaurant, apparently they have been around forever but I've never heard of them before. Learn something new every day.

Flight home was uneventful.