Tag: vision quest

This Is Who We Are!

My internal clock is wrecked.  Over the past 2 weeks I have stayed up to watch SpaceX launch the Falcon 9.  Then I stayed up to watch Dragon dock with the International Space Station.  Then I stayed up to watch Red Bull Stratos postpone, then postpone, then postpone, then abort.

Last night I stayed up to watch Red Bull Stratos, postpone, then postpone, then postpone, then postpone, then, well, THIS!

So I watched the launch, the 2.5 hours it took to hit the ceiling, then I watched a man, 127,000 feet in the air (and I use the term air loosely).  This man stepped out at the edge of space from a capsule…and jumped.  I saw it live.  When he pulled out of his spin and I got my breath it occurred to me that my face was absolutely covered in tears.

Friends, this is us.

Nearly once a month I watch the movie Vision Quest.  In it,  the protagonist Louden Swain trains to tackle his epic quest of defeating legendary high school wrestler, Shoot.  His older coworker takes the day off of work to watch the match.  The following scene sums up things perfectly.

Anyways, I then proceeded to go to sleep at noon.  Now my clock is busted.

Falcon 9 Launch

Well, the Falcon 9 launch ended up being aborted.  No matter.  Lessons learned.  There’s a relaunch scheduled for Tuesday.

On the upside of this, on Saturday, the little one and I were able to finally launch without losing/destroying our rocket.

I don’t think I’m more passionate about anything in this world than space flight.  When you watch a Nascar race, you often, whether you admit it or not, partially watch it for the accidents.  These launches are nothing like that.  In the hours leading up to the launch I start getting butterflies in my stomach, almost like I’m about to go see a girl I’m dating.  In the seconds, it’s almost like an impending orgasm.  You don’t know exactly what is going to happen, but the anticipation is absolutely incredible.  There’s even a sense of communion that comes with it.  I watched with some friends on facebook, and even hearing the excitement of the guy counting down (who was so excited that he had to slow his count as he got ahead of the clock) made me feel like I was there, not just with my friends, but with a specter that is the glory of our species, looking at history being made.

I had this whole idea to wax poetic about it, then it occurred to me that this has all been said before.  My friend John introduced me to a movie a long time ago called Vision Quest that’s already got this covered:

 

Side Note:  Yesterday I sold video games and bought books with the money.  Something about that seemed cool.  I also cleared 8 hours of Bar Study and a 6 mile run.  Not shabby.

Bar Tally: 34.5 hours.

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