Initiate Launch Sequence

If you’ve been following along on the Hundred Goals’ Facebook page, you’re already aware that I’ve experienced some challenges with my most recent attempt to witness a Space Shuttle launch. For those of you who don’t “Like” the Hundred Goals’ Facebook page, I’ll fill you in on the details…(and you should be ashamed of yourselves!)

Erin and I waited as long as we were comfortable with waiting before we bought our plane tickets to Orlando. We didn’t want to book anything just to have it postponed like last time. We waited until we thought there was no way NASA would cancel the launch. Yeah, right! The next morning I checked my Facebook account, and had a message from a friend asking if I’d heard that the launch was postponed for ten days. Obviously, I hadn’t…but Google confirmed my worst nightmare. The launch was postponed.

ARGH!

Honestly, I’d never been more frustrated. Literally hours after buying our plane tickets, making hotel reservations and booking a rental car, NASA delayed the launch due to schedule conflicts with the Russians who would be working on the International Space Station at the same time. I guess space is a busy place…

I called the airline and tried to change the date of my flight but they wanted to charge me an insane amount of money. It would’ve been more cost-effective to just book a new flight than to reschedule. I tried negotiating but wasn’t making any progress and just hung up the phone. It looked like I was going to be out hundreds of dollars…yet again.

Luckily for me, Erin knows how to play the “Duh, I’m an idiot” role very well and was able to convince the airline to cancel our flight without any charges. She then called the hotel and rebooked our dates without any troubles and was able to do the same for our rental car. She’s so awesome!

Of course, we weren’t going to make the same mistake again, so we’ve waited to the bitter end to buy plane tickets only to watch them continue to get more expensive each day until they reached a point where we couldn’t justify spending that kind of money. So, instead of flying to Florida, we’re driving.

It will take us two days of driving to get to Titusville. I’m not going to lie, this is going to suck. I don’t expect it to be a very fun or interesting ride. We won’t have much time to take detours since we need to be back by Monday for school. Illinois isn’t a very exciting state to drive through, and the police love out of state speeders! Blah!

I tried to convince anyone I knew to ride along, but my efforts were fruitless. I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to think this journey might just be a little crazy! I mean, I’m going to Florida! Fun, sun, Space Shuttles! The President of the United States is going to be there…Apparently that’s not reason enough for most rational people to hop in a car for 52 hours of driving. Can’t say I blame ‘em, but I’ll have a much better story to tell than they will…

And isn’t that what life’s all about?