On four seperate occasions over the past 25 years I've been in Orlando at the same time a shuttle launch was scheduled. All four times I drove the Bee Line two hours east to watch it, and every single damn time the launch was scrubbed - after I had made it to the coast. I still haven't seen one of these marvelous things go, and I really, really want to!
Flashback: July, 1969 - my parents had taken me on vacation to Daytona Beach (every year, twice a year, for 13 straight years, to be exact). I was 12 and really into the space program - hard not to be at that age and time when it seemed like the cover of every Life, Time, Nat Geo and you-name-it magazines featured NASA stuff. My dad surpised us by taking us to Cocoa Beach to watch the launch of the Apollo 11 mission (first moon landing, to the uninitiated). To this day it is still the grandest, loudest thing I've ever experienced, even from jam-packed railroad tracks 2 miles away. I recall my teeth actually vibrating in my head - even at that distance - from the punch that Saturn V booster packed.
A few years later I attended a Deep Purple concert. The band had just recently established a Guiness world record for loudness (decibel count, I believe), and everyone at the concert left with ears ringing for an hour afterwards from Blackmore's axe and Glover's bass. When my friends could finally hear me, what they heard was "Saturn's louder!!!" They had no clue what I meant.
