Cruisin’ Along

After our trip down memory lane in Cocoa, we’ve been heading north at a pretty good clip, first to the old, but friendly municipal marina in Titusville, two days in Daytona Beach (where I got to go clear back to Vero Beach for my final tooth appointment) then on to St. Augustine.

It has been pretty chilly in north Florida, as the continuing lousy weather in the East sends waves of northerly winds down this way. But the cruising is easy in protected waters. We had 25 knots on the nose coming into Daytona, but in the beautiful Intracoastal Waterway, had no more than one foot waves. Daytona Beach was a particularly good stop — huge municipal marina with all the ammenities, and a totally rebuilt downtown.

The other highlight of our Cocoa stay, other than the thrill of Neuharth-terror, was a trip out to the Kennedy Space Center, by myself since poor John was once again experiencing some back-area pain. As you know, I love air and space museums, but Kennedy is the piece de resistance on the space side. You get a real feeling for the SCALE of the effort, the size of the huge machines it took to get to the moon, the focus and dedication of the hundreds of thousands of people who worked toward seemingly impossible objectives. The exhibits are wonderfully done now, and will be even better once the new Atlantis space shuttle building opens this summer. There is a surprising amount of activity at Kennedy, even with the space shuttle program done. Three private contractors (Boeing, Space X and Sierra Nevada) are doing launches and a new rocket is being built to service the space station and deep space exploration. Plus the normal spy satellite activity.

The thought that kept recurring as I realized once again what our country had to do to get to the moon, is how paltry our current efforts to accomplish ANYTHING as a nation seem to be. In seven years, 1961 to 1968, 400,000 people worked with great dedication to solve unbelieveably complex problems. They put not one, but 12 people on the moon. Yet a simple objective like decent nutrition, education and health care for every American child is something we can’t seem to wrap our hands around. The people riding on the tour bus and eating lunch seemed to feel the same way, and you heard a lot of comments like, “This is really great, but what are we doing now?”