Last launch of the Space Shuttle

Sorry for the delay on this post - I had technical difficulties with the video I took of the launch. I gave up and posted the footage from NASA of the launch.


I cannot believe I had the privilege to witness the last launch of the Space Shuttle.

My friend Lisa entered the lottery they had here at work for passes to park on-site at the Kennedy Space Center and she received a Turn Basin parking pass - about 3.5 miles from the space shuttle launch pad. And she invited me and two other friends to go with her. An 18 hour drive later, we were in Vero Beach, Florida and ready for the launch!

Launch was on Friday, July 8th at 11:26am. So we decided to leave our hotel at 4am just to make sure we got there in time :). They were expecting about 750,000 people, so we didn't want to get stuck in traffic. Since we were so early, there was minimal traffic and we had no issues getting on-site as we all had our work badges with us (which meant we also got free entry into the KSC Visitor Center later that day to buy more souvenirs :)). We were parked at our site by 6:30am.

Driving past the Vehicle Assembly Building (where the Solid Rocket Boosters and External Tank are attached to the Space Shuttle)



Atlantis - 3.5 miles away



We arrived so early, that the security wasn't yet setup around the press area, so we walked over to the official countdown clock and took some pictures.


Go Atlantis!!!


See the silver van/bus on the left hand side? That would be the AstroVan taking the crew out to the launch pad.



About 5 minutes prior to launch, my hands got all sweaty and my heart was beating fast. We were all laughing at how incredibly nervous and excited we were. My hands were literally shaking. And then, 31 seconds prior to ignition, I heard "failure" over the loud speaker. The crowd groaned and silence followed. It turns out the arm that has the vent cap (covers the tip-top of the External Tank) was showing data that made it look like it had not rotated away from the Shuttle, so they had to confirm with cameras that it was out of the way of the Shuttle. Talk about hair raising, stomach in throat moments. The launch window is only about 5 minutes long , exceed that time and it would have to be scrubbed and attempted the next day.

Launch Video

The launch control team did a phenomenal job and Atlantis launched only 2 minutes past her official launch time of 11:26am. I was able to see a launch last May, just before sunrise and was amazed by how bright the Shuttle is as she ascends. However, this time I was BLOWN AWAY by how bright she was in broad daylight!!! She had barely cleared the pad when I was overcome with emotion, not believing I was witnessing the last launch of a Space Shuttle. Ever. My hands shook as I held my little point and shoot camera to the side to try and capture the launch in video and tears streamed down my cheeks. It was over too quickly. My friends and I just stared at each other, cheeks wet with tears, trying to wrap our minds around what we had just witnessed. Discovery and Endeavor each put up a fight on their last launches, technical issues causing delays on both launches. Atlantis went out a graceful lady. Accepting of her fate and with a show I will never forget.

There was a low cloud ceiling so we were only able to see her for about 30 seconds, but after Atlantis left our sight, we could see the shadow of her plume projected on the clouds...and hear her!


We were there.


The end of an era. But not the end of the American space program. With the International Space Station, we will maintain an American presence in space until at least 2020.

Shadow Creek Ranch Sprint Triathlon

So, this is the only picture I took of this race. It's of my shirt :)

The day before this race, I tweaked my back...adding air to my bike tires no less. It went something like this: Front tire: pump, pump, pump, pump. Done. Back tire: pump, pump, pu-OH MY GOSH THE RIGHT SIDE OF MY BACK!!!! Yeah, it was hurting to bend at the waist...as in the motion that you use on the bike to lean down to grab the handlebars (and aerobars). So, I stretched, and iced, and popped some muscle relaxers. Rinse and repeat that series throughout the day. The back was feeling better by evening, so I went to sleep thinking, "if I wake up and it feels better, I am doing this race until The Back tells me to stop". And praise the Lord, when I woke up, the back was at about 85% (pretty much normal these days, although, I've been hitting about 90% lately). So I jumped in my car and headed to the race.

My stats:

Age group (30-39): 19/31

Swim: 12:57 (slow, but only 50 sec slower than my pool time, which shows how nice the open water swim was)
T1: 1:55
Bike: 48:08 (16.8mph average)
T2: 1:14 (one of my longer T2 transitions because I forgot to lay out my Endurolyte capsules (salt pills) and had to dig them out of my bag)
Run: 36:04 (11:16/mile pace) - eh, I was just glad my face didn't explode away from my skull. It was so hot.

Total time: 1 hr 40 min.

The Story:
I met my friends Erin V, Rick, and Lisa L in transition, and we walked down to the swim start. This was the first time I was doing a swim where it was a point to point swim (ie, we started the swim in one spot and exited in another spot). What this meant was a glorious straight stretch of swimming with no buoys (and swimmer congestion) to swim around. As we waited for the swim to start, we were "treated" to a surprise shower of the ground sprinklers. Apparently, someone forgot to tell the park to turn them off that morning :). Despite the heat and humidity, 400 triathletes found themselves shivering at the swim start. Good times.

Swim (77 deg, 90% humidity)
The airhorn blasted and off we went, water churning. It was actually one of the less hectic open swim starts I have done, so that helped me get into my pace (my SLOW pace) quickly. I only finished 50 seconds slower than my pool time, so the open water craziness at swim start wasn't too bad (for comparison, my last tri swim time was 3 minutes slower than my pool time). I have so much room to improve in this area.

Bike (81 deg, 82% humidity, heat index, 86 deg)
The bike was pretty decent. However, I hadn't ridden my bike in 3 weeks and hadn't done an actually brick workout (bike then run - I did do two 'pseudo' bricks: after a 45 minute spin class, I ran 2.5 miles) so I was cautious on how much I pushed it on the bike, I didn't want to blow up on the run. I definitely could have pushed more.

Run (86 deg, 72% humidity, heat index, 92 deg)
The theme of the run was "hot, hotter, holy moly it's hot". There was no shade on the concrete trail that we ran on for 3.2 miles. I ran with Gatorade, something I have found key for me to do so I don't overheat (too much :) ) on the run. I also took an Endurolyte capsule. Endurolyte is a brand of salt pills - they are supposed to help you not to overheat. I forgot them on the bike, so I think if I would have taken one on the bike and then on the run, it would have been a bit better. I did have to stop and walk a couple of times, not because my muscles were tired, but because I was seriously afraid I was going to do damage to my skull as the top of my head felt ready to blow off. HOT.

Thoughts:
I did not feel ready going into this race. Due to some other medical issues I had earlier in the month, I hadn't put in the training time I wanted to. However, after the race, my muscles felt great, so that tells me I did have the training. Now, I need to up my training so I can start getting faster. My back did GREAT during the race. It did AWFUL after the race. By the time I drove home, it was starting to tighten and by late afternoon, I could barely walk. I stretched, iced, rested, and eventually popped a muscle relaxer and a Vicadin because it was THAT bad. Thankfully, when I woke up on Monday, it had calmed quite a bit and I could walk without the "granny stoop". My chiropractor got me in at 9am and PTed me up. By the end of the day, things were much better. I've had to use the back pillow all week for additional support, but my run this morning went well (no back issues all day), so I am so pleased with how quickly the Back bounced back. Thank you Lord! But still, I'll take one day at a time. One race at a time. And be thankful for what I CAN do and for what He allows me to do. By the way, this race happened to be one year TO THE DAY from when I went to the ER initially for my back pain. How great is God? He has taught me so much about myself and my walk with Him, my position before Him. I would NOT trade in the past year for what I have learned. And that my friends, can only be typed because of His grace. Thank you God.

Confessions of a Swim Slacker

Hi, I am a Swim Slacker (i.e. not me in the above photo :) ).

See, I love swimming. My mom always says I could swim before I could walk. I have always enjoyed the water, be it pool or ocean. One would think with such a love of water and a decent introduction to swimming (my mom was a lifeguard and on the swim and dive teams in high school so she taught all of us kids to swim in early childhood) I would be a decent swimmer. So.not.true. (and not Mom's fault, by the way :) ).

Okay, I am not a bad swimmer exactly. I had one of my co-workers who has raced several Ironman triathlons come out and critique my swimming. His summary was that I have a technically decent stroke and a strong kick. I just don't glide. Gliding is important in swimming because it means you go faster and waste less energy getting where you are going.

So, I am a slow swimmer. And it bugs me. I wish I could hop in the water and Michael Phelps-out all my swim training sessions, but that isn't happening soon (okay, EVER :) ).

Why am I taking all this time to let you know my swimming woes? 'Cause the sad truth is that if something doesn't come easily to me or I don't see myself improving, I don't want to do it. And swimming fits right into this category. I want to be instantly good at swimming, without the work and effort required to improve (::rolling eyes at myself::, oh Melissa, you are so logical).

Anyhow, now that the cat is out of the bag publicly, that means I am accountable (in my head at least, maybe you all don't care, but I am going to PRETEND you care) to truly making an effort to improve my swimming. Up until this point, it's been half-hearted: I did correct my hand-entry position into the water (thanks to Ironman Coworker who warned me I could atrophy some arm muscles if I kept up my "Melissa-esque" hand-entry position). The correction has stuck and has definitely helped. I am also doing all of the drills he told me to do.

I swam 500yds today because I have a race this weekend and the swim is 500yds. And today was the first time since last year that I swam 500yds in a row. And it was slow. 12:06 to be exact. That, my friends, is 1:12 PER lap. ::heaving sigh::. I am slow.

So, I need to swim more. Three times a week is my goal. Now that I am back in town for a decent chunk of time, I think that will make it easier to stick with that goal. And I am going to create a new swim training plan, borrowing heavily from a swim article that was in the latest issue of Triathlete magazine.

God has allowed me to start training again so I'm going to do my part and glorify Him in my training and not whine about how slow I swim and rather, be thankful that I CAN swim.

It's time to shake this Swim Slacker attitude ::focused determined face::

Score!

Remember in my last post I mentioned that I wanted to read some of Churchill's memoirs of WWII, but wasn't willing to tackle all 6 volumes? Well, last week I was perusing the bookshelves in Half-Price Books in hopes of snagging a copy of Lauren Hillenbrand's latest book ("Unbroken"). I was unsuccessful. However, my disappointment was short-lived because I found this beauty: an ABRIDGED version of Winston Churchill's Memoirs of The Second World War for $6.98!!! Oh happy day! So I bought it. And it's only 1000 pages. ;-)

A couple of books

No, this is not turning into a book review blog -I've just had such a streak of great reads that I feel compelled to force my book-nerd excitement on you all :)

Two things inspired me to learn more about Winston Churchill -
1) Reading "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society", which takes place in England, post WWII.
2) Nerd moment - an episode of season 5 Doctor Who that takes place during the Blitz and features Churchill.

I started thinking about how much I don't know about this man, who played such an important role in history. After putting out a few feelers, my friend and history buff, Lindsey, recommended this biography to me. I was surprised by how short it was (I mean, biographies are usually tomes right?) - this was only 160 pages. From the start, I wasn't a fan of the writing style. It felt rushed, as though Mr. Johnson wanted to keep the book to 160 pages and was going to cram in as much information as he could. The flow of the book was choppy, jumping from Churchill fact to Churchill fact, but not so much so that it made me want to stop reading. I did learn a lot about Churchill and I appreciated how both Churchill's flaws and successes were discussed in the book. He was a person, not perfect. I discovered that Churchill was a prolific writer and I would like to tackle one of his tomes (yes, tomes is the apppropriate descprition for his books- for example: "The Second World War" consists of 6 volumes and 5000 pages!) in the future. Because of the nature of "cram everything into a 160 pages" of this book, some of the topics that I was interested in (specifics about the Blitz and Churchill's role) were glossed over and considering the length of "The Second World War" I think it will cover all and more of what I want to know :) (although I don't plan to read all 6 volumes). So, overall, good intro to Churchill.

"The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin was also recommended to me by Lindsey.

Summary: A man, Sam Westing, dies in a mansion. Sixteen people living in an apartment complex next to the mansion receive letters summoning them to the mansion. Upon arriving at the mansion, these sixteen people are told that they are they are heirs, but only if they can solve who killed the man - the catch? It's one of them. The one who can figure out "who dunit?" is the true heir...of 200 million dollars. The group is broken into teams of two and each team is given four clues. The book is all about them trying to piece together the clues so that they can win the grand prize. Excellently written and a fun read, this young adult mystery kept me guessing until the end - lots of twists and turns, with a few surprises through in for good measure. "The Westing Game" is well-deserving of the Newberry award it received in 1979.

It's a table!!!

Remember the table on this post?

I finally got around to sanding, priming, and painting it!!!

All set to break in my DeWalt orbit sander (that I have had for over a year). I ended up not having to use the ear plugs because this is a super quiet sander!


All sanded! I only used the orbit sander on the table top. Had to use good old fashioned sheet sandpaper and elbow grease on the rest, but it didn't take long at all to remove the varnish.

Following furniture painting instructions from Young House Love, one of my favorite DIY blogs, I used an oil based primer (Behr's). Unfortunately, there was a bit of Young House Love tutorial fail during this process. They said I could apply the primer with a brush or a foam roller, recommending the roller for beginners. So I foam rolled. And this resulted in air-bubbles in the primer. Now, I have never used oil based paint/primer/anything before, so I thought it was odd, but also thought "well, maybe this is how it is supposed to be". When searching the tutorial for what sheen of paint to use, in the comments section on their painting post, I saw several readers complaining about the foam roller leaving air bubbles. The YHL crew apologized, admitting they had never tried the roller, they stick to the brush method, and said they would update the post. Don't get me wrong, I heart this DIY couple a ton, but a bit of a fail - the update was never made and my table was now texturized. Oh well. I let it dry for 2.5 days, since it was pretty muggy out.

Finished product (almost!)

I applied two coats of Behr's "Popped Corn" (one of my favorite whites out there). I applied the first coat with a super smooth foam roller but still experienced the air bubbles, so I caved and began the meticulous job of using a brush and avoiding brush strokes. It came out pretty decently (you can just barely see the texture) and I am happy with my first adventure in furniture painting! Only step left is to put a coat of polyurethane on it to help with food spills/stains, but I will get to that later this week.

Welcome to my breakfast nook, Table. I think you and I are going to be friends. Especially after I dress you up with a fantabulous round rug I am getting from Anthropologie! :)

Awesome timing

This is a belated post because I finally found the song that I wanted to blog about.

After leaving Kearney, NE after my grandparents' funeral, I had to take the rental car back to the airport I was flying out of, a three hour drive. I was having a teary drive, it had been a hard week and need some turns to distract me. It was slim pickin's among the available radio stations that weren't country or static, and then I stumbled upon a station that was coming through loud and clear and I heard this song. After the song finished, the station faded out (and afterwards was intermittent). I lost it. It was so perfect - it brought comfort that God was near during my grief and also affirmed all of what God has been teaching me the past 10 months with my back. I wanted to share it with you:

Blessings by Laura Story

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things

(Chorus)
'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if the thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
And all the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

Chorus

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home

Chorus

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise