Short Vacation and a Little Flying out of KSSI

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Just back from a long weekend down south. I hit Kennedy Space Center on Friday to touch base again with the space program. Really nice to hang around where a lot of it happened and is still happening.

Went to see Greg Summers of The Student Pilot Journal. Greg's an IT guy at Astrotech in Titusville and he and his colleagues were kind enough to give me a tour. I didn't take any pictures other than these out of respect for Astrotech and its clients, but did get to stand within 30 feet of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), which was undergoing checkout in preparation for launch aboard a Delta II rocket targeted for 11:45 a.m. EDT on May 16. Yeah, there was a glass partition and all, but it was really cool to see the telescope from that close.

I spent the next few days on Jekyll Island in Georgia. I rented a C-172R from Golden Isles Aviation at Malcolm Mc Kinnon Airport on St. Simons Island flew around the perimeter of Jekyll Island a few times. This is a shot of the Oceanside Inn and Suites where we've been coming for more than 15 years.

And here's a guy I met on the golf course on Monday. Probably 6-8 feet. This is a telephoto shot and you can be assured that I didn't walk up to him with a measuring tape. They apparently went around the course and took all of the really big gators out this year or last year. This one was about the biggest I saw.