Darren usually calls me on the way home from work to kill the 15 or so minutes of his drive. Especially lately, he knows I've got absolutely NOTHING going on other than napping on the back patio (which is actually a really nice way to spend an afternoon). During the conversation I mentioned the interesting news that ex Schaumburg Mayor Al Larsen's daughter is now a high-level manager for the NASA Artemis program, which of course peaked our interest, as a couple of complete space-nerds (tm). As many of you have experienced over the years, we started our patented Darren/Rob Riff On A Subject (tm), because as long as we amuse ourselves, we don't care if anyone else follows what we are saying. In fact, the more we confuse people, the more we are amused, which of course just makes everyone (mostly our wives) shake their heads in pity, with a hint of self-doubt about their choice of mates.
Anyway, Darren starts off with the idea that if an ex-Schaumburg resident is now in charge of the personned moon-launch, couldn't she do a couple of local neighbors a solid and let us be the first to launch? Sounded very logical to me. Then he adds "I wouldn't even care if the thing blew up on the pad, it would just be so cool to be a part of it". I replied with "now THAT would be a great way to end the Blog!". So I'm going to write the final post in advance, in the off-chance this comes to pass...
We've had NUMEROUS space-related moments in our 50 years together. One of our favorite things to do was head out on the boat at Turtle Lake in mid-august and watch the Pleiades meteors streak over our heads. It was during one of these excursions we discovered how interesting it is when the light beams from flashlights bounce off the water, especially in a very low fog. (Warning: Geek Level MODERATE and climbing) THAT was a great Riff for a long time...
About 10 or 12 years ago we drove out to Rt. 47 in the middle of the night to get to a dark enough location to see a comet on the horizon. We got nervous hanging by a farmer's field thinking he was gonna come shutgun us for trespassing.
(Warning: Geek Level HIGH) Three times us two kindergarten buddies have taken trips for space related reasons. The first time was in January of 1996 when we flew to Florida to catch a Shuttle landing (and side trip to Key West. Oh yeah, I mentioned that already... gotta tell you all about that some time...). We crashed in a cheap Days Inn just down the road from the landing site. On the night of the landing we took a nap and headed over about 1am to where the maps showed we'd be near the runway. There were a LOT of other crazy people on the side of the road with us; kind of fun since we were all Space Geeks Extraordinaire (tm). At the appointed time we strained our eyes and ears to find some hint of what was about to occur. The expected twin sonic booms popped and we knew it was close (ok... it was more like a couple of tiny hand claps, but us Space Geeks Extraordinaire (tm) knew what they were!) In the distance flood lights lit up the horizon. A flicker of something flashed past the lights and I yelled out "There it was!!! Did anyone else see it?".
.
.
.
And we all got back in our cars and left. (Geek Level SAD)
But it was still cool as hell to be there!
This was also the trip where Darren force-fed me numerous episodes of Bevis & Butthead. Every once in a while I wake up screaming in the middle of the night. I can't bring myself to tell Donna what I experienced.
I'll be back in a day or two to tell you about the similarly night-timed Shuttle launch we experienced, as well as the time our incredible wives gave us the best Geek present ever. Wait... they did that twice...
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