While wandering around on a day off, we decided to try the Plum Creek “Riverwalk.” Wendy had the scooter charged, so we could go miles…and we did. It turns out that son and my hiking XP, combined with the wife’s power chair, gives us a long range, 3 miles one way on the first day, a real pretty place.
Meadows, Interstates, and a wild crippled woman on a scooter.
Here’s the 3 miles up, more meadows and too many rabbits for Bella to keep up with.
Some more stuff. Don’t walk on Colorado concrete or you stub toe very badly.
We are thinking of moving, cause this motel sucks, but Castle Rock is a nice place, good people, and relaxing. Until then, enjoy Colorado!
In the summer of ’81, I was 15 years old. I wasn’t your average teen. I was a committed juvenile delinquent and drug “enthusiast,” with a somewhat troubled past. My parents were hippies who–like many counter culture rebels–became hard core drug addicts. They divorced during a state mandated custody battle. The cops seized my siblings and myself because my parents refused to snitch on their dealer, basically. I spent two years (’76-’77) with my grandmother, who was a vicious and mean, high-strung stress case with an extreme superiority complex. My Mom eventually regained custody of us and we returned to our outlaw life. After a few years, and developing a drug habit, I tired of the poverty and stress of it all. I was offered to return to my Grandma’s house and I accepted. I returned much more street smart and ready to party it up.
The San Fernando valley in the early eighties was a great place to party. Cruising Van Nuys Blvd (if you google “cruising Van Nuys Blvd” you can see what it was like) had been shut down about a year earlier and that scene had moved to a large park called Balboa Park. The lot would fill with cars, all of which would tune their radios to KMET, and a huge party would happen. Every once in awhile, the cops would drive through and everyone would hide their beers and what have you. It was a great scene.
My friends and I would buy six packs of Mickey’s big mouths and split them. You’d put one beer in each back pocket and drink the third. That way, if you had to run, you only lose one beer. We had a plan for everything. This informal gathering happened every Wednesday night, just like the Van Nuys Blvd scene it replaced. We had many memorable times there, and this story centers around the last one I had there, during the summer of ’81.
This photo was actually taken at Balboa Park on a Wednesday in 1981 or 1982 . Obviously it’s early in the day and things were just getting started.
I had a friend named Marvin. Marvin was far more criminally minded than I. He had been to juvie a few times and had a huge record. He’d dive right in to any criminally oriented situation with aplomb. He pushed me to expand my lack of respect for the law. I was positively small-time by comparison.
Marvin was very small. I was about 6” taller than him. I was kind of a protector of his. He’d get belligerent often and at ill-advised times, and I’d usually smooth things over with whomever wanted to kill him this time. Sometimes a fight would be unavoidable. Those times we’d just fight it out.
This particular Wednesday night was off to a good start when I ran into Marvin. I was already a little drunk, had my three Mickey’s big mouths and was raring to go. Marvin pulls out some ‘ludes and gives me two of them. I was starting to feel really good about things, a feeling later proven to be misguided. As we walked the rows of cars, talking to girls and checking out hot-rods, this big dude runs up and starts hassling Marvin. Here we go again.
I go to assess the situation. It seems that the ‘ludes Marvin had given me earlier had been fronted to him and he had no plan to pay for them. The big dude seemed very agitated and was demanding his 20 bucks. I sprang into negotiating mode and asked what he needed that we could maybe actually get for him. After some back and forth, we agreed that Marvin and I would go steal a car battery as payment. This seemed like an easy was to avoid violence, and we were sure it’d be quick and painless.
There was really only one option for stealing car batteries near this park, a row of apartment buildings across the street. We went to the first car, in the first space of the first building. It turned out to be a horrible choice. There was an overhead storage locker which covered the front half of the hood. I told Marvin to be the lookout, so he stood at the edge of the lot watching out. I had no tools, but I figured I could just wind the clamps off. The hood crashed loudly into the storage bin when opened. I got the negative cable off as planned, but the positive side would not budge more than a slight partial turn. Eventually, I decided to just yank it out and hope the inertia would pop it off. Drugs and booze famously spawn bad decisions. We had both the former and the latter.
Well, after one particularly loud crashing noise I see Marvin waving at me frantically. I start waving back to say, “I can’t help it,” but he responds as if to say, “NO, not that.” Then, he raises both his hands like a stick-up victim from the movies. I was perplexed until I saw the three people with guns pointed at him. They told me to come out with my hands up, so I did. They ushered us into one of the apartments and sat us on the couch inside. There were more armed residents inside and now we had about 6 guns pointed at us. I remember one of them looked like a flint lock taken from a plaque off the wall. Anyway, they held us until the cops arrived. I’m sure the proximity of the park caused them much concern, with all the partying and such, explaining the guns and quickness with which they used them.
The cops took us down to the station and handcuffed us to bench. After about an hour, Marvin’s Mom came and picked him up. I assumed my grandmother would come for me next. Well, an hour later, she still hadn’t come. Finally the cops came and told me that she had told them to keep me. I was going to be driven to Juvenile Hall. Whoo-hoo! After another hour on the bench, they walked me out to a waiting car and we were on our way.
Juvie was pretty much what I expected. It was a huge concrete building with only tiny windows way up high on one wall. It was three floors high and the lesser offenders like me were on the upper floor. That meant we could watch the traffic on the overpass through our window slits, if we stood up on our beds. The food was disgusting and the place was noisy and smelly and fucking cold all the time. We stayed in our cells almost all day. Ate in there and everything. There were some tables in the hall area outside the cells and we’d go out for about an hour every day. I spent about two months there going to trial and then waiting to get shipped out. I remember the radio played the Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty duet over and over because it had just came out. I will always connect that song to that place and time.
This is the actual juvenile hall I was in, as seen from one of the cars we would watch pass by.
Juvenile court is (or, at least, was…) unlike any other depiction or reality of court I had ever seen. As a minor, you have NO rights at all. There’s no concerns about proportionate punishments, rights to confront accusers, even the right to defend oneself. Marvin’s Mom had hired a lawyer for him and he (the lawyer) was the only one who spoke, other than the judge and, briefly, some kind of social worker/probation person, who made recommendations to the judge. Marvin’s lawyer gave a dissertation on what a good kid he was and how the only reason he was in trouble was because of my bad influence. I was steaming mad and kept raising my hand. The judge seemed irritated by me and kept waving me to shut up. After awhile he proclaimed that he had heard enough. Marvin was sentenced to house arrest and probation and I was sentenced to “suitable placement.” For how long, I had no idea. What suitable placement was, again, no clue. All I knew was I got jacked in that courtroom.
Well, one day they drove me out to my “suitable placement.” It was a large group of brick buildings arranged like a school, with a quad, dorms and a cafeteria. It was run by Catholic monks. Everyone was “Brother X, Brother Z,” etc. There weren’t any walls or fences, so escape was always an option. Only the knowledge that I would be hunted down kept me from just leaving, well, that and the constant reminders that the next place was gonna be much worse. There was a school adjacent to the facility and we would spend regular school hours there. I was assigned a job in the kitchen and a dorm space with a cabinet and a bed. We had group therapy every day, where we’d talk about our problems and receive any news about our status, etc. The staff got to determine how long we would have to stay. We got weekend passes which we could earn in various ways. I had to talk my grandma into letting me go to a few at her house (I’m pretty sure the staff called her and made it happen). I got two weekend passes, one of which turned out to be transformative.
There was three things that stood out as notable events while there. First, when I had just arrived, a guy in the kitchen had a half a joint. He was gonna share it with me. I figured we could put a ladder all the way up to the vent so the smoke could escape without smelling the place up. Then, we decided to cover any remaining smell with a mixture of all the cleaning products available, particularly the strong smelling ones.
It turns out that mixing these chemicals can cause a variety of symptoms, including loss of consciousness and even death. Who knew? All the fumes rose to the top of the room, where we were atop the ladder. The fumes were so overwhelming, I couldn’t tell if the pot had any effect. The other guy fell off the ladder, hurt himself and I had to go get him help. The whole thing was viewed as us mixing the wrong chemicals and we never got into trouble because they never found out about the pot.
The second thing was much more consequential. On my second weekend pass, I was out looking to get high. I ran into a friend and asked if he had any dope. He said he didn’t but he was going to a meeting and I was welcome to go. I had to cram as much into my time as possible and there was nothing going on so I said, “yes.”
We drove to some little room in a church. I walked in and immediately thought, “there’s no way these are my kind of people.” They all had cars and jobs and they seemed like normal people. Then they started talking. They talked about all the things I was doing as a delinquent and how they had done similar and felt bad about it. They talked about having a conscience and how it seemed no-one else did. They talked about how it felt to know you were gonna keep doing dope, no matter if it killed you and how hopeless it felt. They seemed to have a window into my soul and made me look at myself in ways I never thought I could.
Prior to that I had all those thoughts and feelings, I just never considered saying them so out loud. I watched people (in my fucked up outlaw world, anyway) go steal, fight, scam and do any manner of devious stuff and never seem to have any feelings of guilt. I assumed that I had to do these things and I would force myself to, but I was wracked with guilt. I thought my guilt was a personal defect which kept me from being all I could be. My life to that point had been a constant battle with my morality to overcome its influence and finally feel the way others looked like they felt. I had never imagined that they all experienced the same turmoil. Now I had proof. I was hooked. I got sober and stayed that way for 30 years.
I was the only one at my placement who had gotten sober. I began to explore my soul and how it worked to regulate my morality. I completely changed my outlook and focus. In the group therapy sessions, I started actually being helpful to the other kids. I started helping them to solve their problems or at least begin to. The average stay there was about 6 months. Some people stayed 5 and some 7. I stayed a whole year. I’m pretty sure some of that was to find a suitable foster home (more on the “suitability” later) but I’m pretty sure my effectiveness at counseling the other kids played a part in extending my stay, as well. In any case, I set the record for longest stay for at least that era. Even a couple of other kids who went to foster homes were released after 6 months.
It was during this time that I developed an ulcer. I was taken to the doctor who injected me with some dye and then x-rayed me. Back then, they had no real drugs for this so they just gave me a list of what not to eat. It was basically everything. Because I was institutionalized, they made me actually stick to it. I spent the last month there eating plain mashed potatoes and egg whites with no seasonings. It was hell. Every meal was a plate of bland whiteness. It sucked balls. I was getting really fed up with the system and wanted out bad.
Eventually, the day came when I was allowed to leave. I was to move to a foster home in a good neighborhood with one other kid who already lived there. Oddly, the “parent” was just a single man, not a couple. I was happy to be leaving and ready to go out into the world. The guy seemed nice enough and the other kid was OK, I guess. I was happy to able to go to meetings and be out in the world, finally. It was about 14 months after I had tried to steal the car battery, and I was finally free to walk the streets, or so I thought.
The other kid that lived there was a full-on fuck-up. He would waltz in with a shiny new stereo and claim he found it in an alley. He’d say that he hoped it worked and then try it out. Amazingly they always worked. The “parent” seemed to buy all of this hook, line and sinker. This kid never got in any trouble whatsoever. He even got brought home by the cops once for some crime or another. The guy never even asked about any of this. In my case, however, if I was a few minutes past curfew, there’d be handcuffs on the tables and endless threats to send me back. It was clear that the other kid was immune from trouble and I had a target on my back. I was young and at least somewhat naive, so I never really understood what was going on until after I decided to leave.
One day I had had enough. I decided to find my bank book with my kitchen job earnings (about $300.00) and split. It was over a year and a half since my crime. I figured that I had paid my debt and was not going to live under this cloud of threats any more. I ditched high school and went hunting for my bank book. As I rifled the drawers in the “parent’s” room, I hit one that was locked. I assumed my stuff was in there, so I used a playing card to open it. Inside was a huge cache of gay porn and some sex toys that seemed like they were aimed towards women, IYNWIMAITYD. That’s when I started to remember a bunch of details. I would come home in the middle of the day and both the “parent” and the other kid would be in bath robes. Sometimes the kid would be taking a bath and the parent guy would go into the bathroom and stay 20 minutes or so. I realized that this guy was fucking the kid and knew I wasn’t going to be down with that. He was trying to get rid of me to cover it up. At that moment, he came in and started yelling about me being a thief, because I jimmied open his drawer. I really wanted to beat the living hell out of him with a lamp. I mean badly. The guy was a minister at a huge church, someone who convinced the state he could look after wayward teenaged boys, and this was what he did. I restrained myself and just left, not even bothering to find my bank book.
It was not easy, being alone on the streets at 16 years old. On top of that, I had a warrant for going AWOL. I started using a fake name, at least for anything official (like talking to the cops). I slept in an abandoned bar across the street from my AA clubhouse for a few months. I would put 4 bar stools together for a bed. I spent my days in bookstores reading book after book. I really can’t remember how I fed myself.
Eventually, I started getting jobs doing drywall or framing houses. Back then, you could buy a tool belt full of tools and just walk up to a jobsite and ask for work. 8 or 10 bucks an hour and if you worked really hard, they’d keep you. Nobody asked for ID or social security info. I did phone sales, auto repos and a bunch of other crap, too. Eventually, I got a job from a guy at the meeting in title insurance. It paid OK and I started saving a bit. Finally, I went to trade school for auto repair and became a mechanic.
One day, I hitchhiked to Santa Barbara with a friend of mine. We just went to hang out and have fun. We were walking down State Street and as we walked, I was cleaning my finger nails with a buck knife. My friend bumped into me a few times. I kept telling him to watch where he was going, but he persisted. Finally, I stopped and adamantly told him to knock it off. Right as I was doing this, a guy walks up and asks, “what are you doing?” He was just a regular looking guy with a Levi’s jacket on. I said, “nothing, just messing around,” and realized I had my knife in my hand, so I folded it and put it away. Well, he opened his coat and pulled out a gun and yelled, “Freeze!” which was silly, because we weren’t moving. We put our hands up and he took his coat off to reveal a Santa Barbara Police shirt. He arrested me for “disturbing the peace.” I used my middle name for a first name and my Mom’s maiden name for the last one. I told him I was 18 years old, so they took me to the county jail. This was on a Friday night.
I sat in jail until Sunday evening, when they called out my alias. I had forgotten it by then so there was significant lag time in my responding. Eventually, I caught on and answered up. The officer told me to roll ’em up because I had made bail. I was shocked. The only one who even knew I was there was my friend and he was 16 also and penniless. The cop walked me down some halls and finally stopped me in a quiet spot. He told me that some friends from L.A. had come up to look for me after my friend hitched back down there and told them what happened. They went to juvenile hall, the police station, the hospital, basically everywhere before ending up at the jail. They tried every combination of my name with no luck (they didn’t know what my alias was).
Finally, they asked to see pictures of arrestees from Friday night and found me that way. The cop said they told him my whole story and he was impressed. He said he was gonna let me them bail me out, but first he took me on a scared straight tour. This guy killed his mom, that guy stole a car, etc. Then he gave me a hundred bucks and said, “don’t come back to my jail,” and I was out.
I tried to make good on his admonition, but it wasn’t to be. About 2 years later, I was riding my motorcycle around and got pulled over. I had long since stopped using fake names, so I gave them my real name. They gave me a chicken shit ticket for loud pipes or dim tail lights or something and after I signed it, they whipped my hands behind my back and handcuffed me. I asked what they were doing and they said I had a warrant from Santa Barbara. Damnit!
This time, I went to L.A. County Jail and had to sit there for 5 days until a bus left for up north. I rode up with all the people who were sentenced to state prison. I got to Santa Barbara jail on Friday, so I had to wait until Monday to see a judge. When I finally did, he seemed pissed that I was there. He said, “years ago you did basically nothing on State Street, there’s not even any peace on State Street to disturb! Now, you’ve spent ten days in jail, and forfeited $100.00 bail for no good reason. I apologize and the case is dismissed.” So now, I get released at like 11 p.m. in Santa Barbara with no money and no way home. I hitched home and it took all fucking night. When I finally got home, my motorcycle had been impounded and cost me about $600.00 to get it out.
I could go on, but this seems like as good of a place as any to end this story. My life, both before and after these events, has been filled with the similar craziness, this is just one sliver of it. BTW, Santa Barbara County Jail, circa early 1980s, was a WAY better place to be an inmate than either L.A. County Jail or Sylmar Juvenile Hall.
P.S. When I adopted my son 7 years ago, I told this story in somewhat abbreviated form, to our social worker. She was amazed, not by that fact that it happened, but by the fact that I turned out OK. She said, basically, “ most of those kids end up spending their whole lives in prison.”
Here we are on the cusp of one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments and many Americans have never been taught what a big deal successfully landing men on the moon was. Most of the Glibertariat know about the Apollo program and some of us probably know about it in much more and fascinating detail than I. Because I was a planetary geology major as an undergraduate it fell upon me to write this short piece on Project Apollo. So here is: “Plntry 101 Apollo Missions MWF 3-4”. If this doggerel inspires you to learn more about Apollo there are plenty of sources for further reading and watching.
The HBO series “From the Earth to the Moon” does a magnificent job with each episode concentrating on one portion of the effort. “In the Shadow of the Moon” is a great documentary which interviewed all the surviving astronauts (less Armstrong) and is purely archival NASA footage and interviews. Even Netflix’s “The Last Man on the Moon” is fantastic on Gene Cernan. There are books, too many to mention, that cover the program from the first detail to the last; from an overview for teens to tomes with a Selenologist’s attention to detail on a handful of samples; and even a crime story about the largest ever heist of lunar material from NASA. Okay, I’ll mention the last- “Sex on the Moon” by Ben Mezrich- covers how a world class BS’ing college student managed to steal samples directly from a NASA secure site.
The Apollo missions can be broadly separated into two categories, the “engineering” missions and the “science” missions. Of course every mission involved both aspects, but the program was designed to work out how to get men safely to the moon and back; then to move on to missions in the more geologically interesting areas. . President Kennedy said we’d go to the moon so now the scientists and engineers asked, “Okay. How do we do this?” NASA was full of engineers and the astronauts were test pilots (and one geologist) with a well-known design and test philosophy of incremental testing and validation. With no surprise this was the approach adopted for the Apollo Program. A series of missions would test aspects of the lunar mission profile culminating in a series of proof of principle landings before the serious science missions began.
There are several ways to go to the moon but they break down to basic models- brute force and meet ups. The brute force option (direct ascent) would involve a missile that would dwarf the Saturn V and involved landing the entire manned portion on the moon. This is what early SciFi films portrayed. The engineering was way too formidable for the time and this plan was discarded. The next version involved multiple launches with small existing launch vehicles and assembling the various parts and pieces in low Earth orbit. The lunar portion would be assembled in orbit. Another version had unmanned return craft sent to the moon with the manned portion landing nearby and returning in the first vehicle. This was daunting, especially considering that our first lunar impact mission (Ranger 3) missed the moon.
Easy, Just Do This and Visit the Moon
The Apollo program adopted the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) mission program. Launch a large system that shed parts as they were no longer needed. This system made sense but involved the US having to develop expertise at multiple skills (orbital rendezvous, docking, multiple firings of engines, people working outside of spacecraft, space navigation etc.) before attempting a lunar mission. These were the goals of the two man Gemini missions. NASA achieved these goals in a rapid two year series of ten missions which learned the required skills for a lunar mission despite multiple mishaps, “adventure learning”, and several near disasters.
The workhorse of Apollo was the Saturn launch system. The smaller “little brother” Saturn IVB was used only for the Apollo 7 manned mission. The Saturn V (ASV) was the monster brother used for the balance of the Apollo missions. The ASV is still the most powerful vehicle ever used by mankind. A full ASV “stack” was 363 feet tall, 33 feet wide (fins added additional width) at the base and could send a 103,600 pound payload into lunar orbit. In order get this machine off the Earth the five engines in the first stage generated 7,610,000 pounds-force. To give an idea of scale, the escape engines atop the Apollo capsule generated more energy than the Redstone that the US used for the first two Mercury flights. The small third stage alone of an ASV was taller than an entire Mercury-Redstone system.
The first stage of the stack was 46 yards tall, weighed 5,100,000 pounds loaded. The five F-1 (or F-2) engines were independently gimbaled and controlled to keep the massive system upright within very small tolerances as it left the pad and powered up to 36 miles of altitude at an engine cutoff of ~160 seconds of flight. The great precision was required both to clear the pad- at the tightest spots there was only 2 feet of space between the ASV and the gantry- and to keep the system from tearing itself apart as it climbed. Even a few feet of shift at the bottom would translate into many yards of movement over a football field higher where the crew was located. This movement combined with the acceleration would have torn the stack apart in a huge fireball. As anybody has climbed even a small sailboat mast can attest, small changes at deck level quickly become manifest off the deck. Add in acceleration, winds aloft, shifting center of gravity as millions of pounds of fuel is consumed, and the rotation of the system and you can see why each engine was gimbaled and computer controlled.
The second stage was slightly smaller and less powerful than the first stage. It was fueled by burning a mix of liquid Hydrogen and liquid Oxygen through five J-2 engines. This pushed Apollo through the upper atmosphere and into space with 1,100,000 pounds-force in up to six minutes of burn time.
The famous footage of the separating booster and the ring shaped interstage (now on TV commercials) shows the ignition of the third stage of the ASV. It had one J-2 engine and same fuel as the 2d stage. The crucial difference was the third stage could be re-ignited in flight. It would burn for 2.5 minutes to place the Apollo into a parking orbit where systems would be checked. Later it would burn for 6 minutes to accelerate Apollo into lunar insertion. This meant the third stage accelerated the remaining stack from 25,000 feet/second (orbital velocity) to 35,545 f/s (lunar insertion) in under six minutes.
The third stage also had two other crucial functions. At the top of the 3rd stage was an instrument unit containing all the computers and instruments required for stages 1-3 to successfully function. Also at the top of the third stage (inside a shroud) the Lunar Module (LM) rode into orbit. The third stage followed parallel and near the Apollo to enter solar orbit after passing the moon. After Apollo 11 most of the third stages were deliberately crashed into the moon to provide signals for seismographs to help determine the interior lunar makeup.
The manned portions of Apollo consisted of the Command and Service Modules (CSM) and the Lunar Module (LM) which was the only true “spacecraft” that man has ever operated. The three seat Command Module was much roomier than the earlier Mercury and Gemini capsules since it had to execute longer missions and have room to bring back “souvenirs” from the lunar surface. In addition to the standard hatches it had a nose hatch designed to mate with the LM to enable the crew to move between the two vehicles. The coke can shaped Service Module had the long term fuel, oxygen, water, and other cells, onboard computers and an engine designed for multiple use. The SM engine was key in retrieving the LM from the third stage, mid-flight corrections, slowing to lunar orbit and accelerating to lunar escape orbit so the mission can return to Earth. Shortly before reentry into the atmosphere the Command Module would separate from the Service Module leaving it in Earth orbit.
CSM
The LM was designed ride into orbit inside the ASV third stage then ferry two men to and from the surface of the moon. The LM had two main parts. The lower section had the legs, descent engine and carried instruments for the lunar surface. It would then serve as the launch platform for the upper ascent stage. The ascent stage was the “home” for the astronauts and could cycle between an atmosphere and no atmosphere. It would carry the astronauts and lunar materials back to the CSM and then be abandoned in lunar orbit or crashed into the moon. Everybody who operated the LM was impressed with the handling, but it could only operate in the vacuum of space.
LM from CSM in lunar orbit
I need to add a few words about Apollo’s computers. A current kid toy has more computing power than the entire computer system used onboard during an Apollo mission. A current smart phone? Forgitaboutit. NASA would have given anything to have a cheap bottom line 2012 model. If you every listen to the unedited complete mission transmissions you’ll hear hours of Houston reading numbers to the crew, the crew reading back the numbers, the crew confirming the numbers entered, a pause while the onboard computer ran one part of an equation, the crew reading the new number to Houston, Houston reading the number back, a pause while Houston checked the new number, Houston reading another number, the crew reading it back…….. That is correct. The computers could not run an entire equation.
The astronauts for the Apollo missions had a clear hierarchy. All the Apollo missions were commanded by either Mercury or Gemini “class” selections and the junior mission members were often from one of the “Apollo” classes. Deke Slayton (Mercury) had been grounded in 1962 for a heart murmur but was made “Director of Flight Crew Operations” and made the crew selections for all Gemini and Apollo missions. His word was law. The mission commander was always an experienced astronaut who had done well previously. The CSM pilot was always an experienced astronaut because he would operating solo in lunar orbit while the others left in the LM. The LM Pilot was the junior astronaut and was more accurately the LM Co-pilot because the Mission Commander actually flew the LM. In total 33 seats were flown by Apollo, 24 different men went to the moon (3 were repeats) and 12 walked on the lunar surface.
Apollo 1
Crew: Grissom (Cdr), White (CSM) Chaffee (2d pilot)
This mission was designed to use the smaller Saturn IVB to achieve low earth orbit to conduct testing on the Command and Service Modules. Slayton chose Grissom as the mission commander because he was considered the best engineering pilot. Grissom was the second Mercury pilot in space, commanded the first Gemini mission, and was to take the first Apollo mission through the engineering paces. During the workup the engineers grew increasingly unhappy with “Gloomy Gus” who was pointing out issue after issue with the capsule and the training apparatus. Ed White flew on the 2d Gemini mission and was the first American to walk in space. Roger Chaffee was the FNG and was a communications specialist.
The crew was concerned about whether or not the capsule would have the deficiencies corrected in time to fly and Grissom was skeptical that the systems would work for the entire scheduled 14 day duration. On Jan 27, 1967, less than a month prior to the scheduled flight date, the crew was conducting a dress rehearsal in the sealed capsule and in a pressurized (29 psi) pure oxygen environment. During the test an electrical short under Grissom’s couch ignited a fire. Nine seconds later a voice (likely Chaffee) announced over the circuits that there was “a fire in the cockpit”. Fifteen seconds later the pressure from the fire caused the capsule to breech and then the nitrogen from outside led to increasing smoke while the fire burned itself out over the next hours. Engineers and technicians outside of the capsule heard the radio call and noticed movement inside, briefly, but the crew was dead even before the capsule breeched.
Apollo 1 Cabin Post Fire
This disaster caused NASA to refocus and redesign numerous aspects of the capsule and systems. Designs went from the major: redesign the door to open under pressure, changing the atmosphere from 100% to 40% oxygen and more carefully checking for friction points; to more mundane- spacesuits changed from nylon to fire resistant materials etc. NASA and the multiple contractors worked feverishly for the next year and a half until the CSM was declared to be flight ready for humans. Meanwhile multiple unmanned launches continued to test the various systems of Apollo and the Saturn V.
Apollo 7- October 1967
Crew: Shirra (Cdr), Eisele (CSM) and Cunningham (LM)
After 21 months of redesign of the CSM the mission of Apollo 7 was the same as Apollo 1. Apollo 7 launched with the smaller ASIVB and conducted testing in low earth orbit for 11 days. From a technical standpoint the mission was a complete success, the CSM flew extremely well and checked out. From a personal management system the mission was a mess.
Wally Shirra flew the Mercury and this was his third flight. Both Eisele and Cunningham were on their first flight. The larger capsule size (about the size of a standard closet) contributed to members suffering from space sickness. This combined with rations that weren’t sitting with the crew’s stomachs and Shirra coming down with a head cold led to “the mutiny”. Shirra and the others started to “talk back” to the ground control team and decided not to perform some requested actions that Shirra didn’t consider crucial to the core mission. The culmination of the mutiny was shortly before re-entry when Shirra decided that crew safety demanded that they not wear their helmets- which had been SOP since the first flight. The new fishbowl type helmets prevented the astronauts from being able to clear their eardrums. Since he and others were suffering from congestion he believed the risks were worse from helmets on versus possible impacts from having the helmets off.
After their return to Houston the crew had to defend their actions for when they didn’t follow directions from the ground. Slayton rejected Eisele and Cunningham from all further flights and Shirra retired from NASA. Their post flight medals were downgraded (the only crew to have that happen) and weren’t returned to the post flight standard awards until 2008. Slayton’s actions had the desired impact on the rest of the astronaut roster, the mutiny was never repeated during the remaining Apollo missions.
Apollo 8- December 1968
Crew: Borman (Cdr), Lovell (CSM), Anders (LM)
This flight is when Apollo started really attaining world prominence. This mission originally was to be another low orbit test, this time with an ASV, to test the LM with a crew aboard. The LM construction and testing was behind schedule so George Low basically said, “Well, we have the launch vehicle, so let’s flip missions and test the CSM under lunar conditions by going around the moon.” The mission change was announced after Apollo 7 returned, the original crew slipped back to Apollo 9 since they were training on the LM and Anders crew was told, “Be ready to go to the moon in two months.” The decision to undertake this mission on such short notice was influenced by having a complete ASV and not wanting to “waste it in low earth orbit”, combined with a recent Soviet mission (Zond 5) which sent some animals around the moon and back to Earth, and a rumored Soviet manned mission to orbit the moon.
Borman and Lovell were both Gemini pilots with well-regarded missions under their belts. Borman had commanded Gemini VII with Lovell as his crew. GVII was designed to be a long term flight of two weeks to simulate the time for a lunar mission. After Gemini VI’s aborted take-off the revised mission had GVII launch before GVI and then when GVI launched the two missions would rendezvous. After the meeting GVI returned to Earth and Borman’s mission remained in orbit for the full 14 days. (Imagine being in your front seat of your car for 14 days without a break.) Lovell later commanded Gemini XII (with Buzz Aldrin). GXII is considered the most successful Gemini flight because they easily docked with a target vehicle, and most importantly Aldrin completed multiple successful EVA’s which finally demonstrated that an astronaut could complete precise tasks outside a spacecraft without undue hazard to themselves or their craft. Michael Collins was originally scheduled to be the CSM pilot and had started training but developed back problems and got two vertebrae fused. Since recovery took time, he was dropped and Lovell was added.
The risks to Apollo 8 were real. This was only the third launch of a Saturn V and the first manned mission with an ASV. The two earlier unmanned launches had some serious issues including a compression problem (“pogo sticking”) that would have endangered the crew. Engineers had developed solutions and Apollo 8 was the test that the solutions worked. The other risk was Apollo 8 had no “lifeboat” or spare engine from a LM. This was the only time during Apollo no spare was flown and was done only because the LM was not ready to fly. Apollo 13 validated having a spare was valuable.
The mission launched on Dec 21, 1968 with no issues. Twelve and a half hours later the crew was approved to conduct lunar insertion and they became the first humans to head to another body in the Solar System. A8 had one issue on the way to the moon when the third stage was shadowing them too closely for comfort. After several discussions with ground control the solution was to radio the abandoned stage to vent all remaining fuel. This changed the trajectory enough to clear the hazard.
Riding to the moon is in some ways like riding a roller coaster. On the way there your initial velocity of 35,505 ft/sec gradually bleeds off as you climb out of the earth’s gravity well. As you travel the craft also slowly rotates (1X hour) like a rotisserie chicken to balance heating and cooling and you can’t even see the moon. Around 55 hours after lunar insertion the craft reaches ~39,000 miles from the moon and has slowed down to around 3,900 ft/sec. At that point the craft enters the lunar gravity well and starts to speed up as it falls down the roller coaster towards the moon. Now comes the odd part. The decision to enter lunar orbit is made with communications to the ground, but the firing of the Service Module engine to slow down to lunar orbit occurs behind the moon and out of communications with the Earth. The A8 CSM was only ~72 miles above the lunar surface and about to swing behind the moon when it got the okay. The CSM engine burn went without an issue and Apollo 8 settled in for 10 orbits (~20 hours) of quality time at the moon.
Now that Apollo 8 was orbiting the lunar surface they started their recon. Apollo 8 was launched so that when they arrived the lighting would be the same as it would be when Apollo 11 arrived. This was important because one key task was to photograph Apollo 11’s approach path and planned landing location. Having completed all their tasks the return to Earth went according to plan.
1968 would not be listed among the best years in America’s history. We were fighting a war in Vietnam and the “Tet Offensive” started off the year. There were multiple assassinations and riots throughout the country. The presidential election came down to Nixon, Humphries and Wallace. It was a good year to have not to have lived through. Apollo 8 was the one thing the country could look up to. The mission was a worldwide phenomenon and totally at odds with the USSR space program. The Soviets always kept their missions held close to the vest, Apollo was everywhere, for anybody anywhere, to watch. The Apollo 8 crew were the first people to see the entire planet in one glance. They shared with us the view of our home planet as a blue marble in the total darkness of space. They pointed the camera down and we all looked down on a totally alien world consisting of shades of grey. This is what the world saw that Christmas Eve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aIf0G2PtHo&app=desktop
One of the Most Important Photos of all Time
One of the Most Important Photos of all Time
Seeing the earth from space is a cliché now as evidenced by VW’s current automobile commercial. But when this photo was released it immediately grabbed the attention of people worldwide. The contrast of the blues and whites of the planet against the dead moon in the foreground and the black of space was instantly understandable. In a blink of an eye that photo was everywhere, from commercial products to stamps issued by a dozen governments and it gave a major boost to the environmental movement.
Apollo 9 March 1969
Crew: McDivitt (CDR), Scott (CSM), Schweickart (LM)
Apollo 8 captured the World’s attention and was glamour personified. It was the first time men journeyed to another body in the Solar System, reading Genesis at Christmas from lunar orbit, and the famous Anders “Earthrise” photo. Apollo 9 returned to the relative humdrum of low Earth orbit, but accomplished critical engineering goals with élan.
James McDivitt commanded Gemini IV on his first space flight and is often overlooked because he remained in the capsule while Ed White made America’s first EVA. Scott was on his second flight after flying Gemini VIII with Armstrong. Schweickart was on his first flight. Scott returned to space commanding Apollo 15. McDivitt transferred to managing the Apollo Program office after this flight.
Apollo 9 was the first time a complete Saturn “stack” was launched. This was test one of a complete lunar mission profile and most importantly was the first time the LM performed in manned flight. The LM was the reason and star of this mission.
The Lunar Module is the only true spacecraft that has ever been flown by man. The LM was designed to only operate outside of the atmosphere, so unlike the Command Module, once the LM piggybacked into orbit inside the Saturn stack it would never return to the planet. The LM was constructed with every ounce in mind and was robust, it was designed to fall the last three feet onto the lunar surface and the lower half was engineered to take the forces of the upper half launching from it. At the same time it was frail and there were areas so thin that a careless move could punch an arm or leg through the skin of the spacecraft.
The launch went well and so did the next 10 days as the crew put the LM through the test program. The crew tested each phase of a lunar mission including safety backup procedures. Schweickart wore the Lunar EVA suit designed for the moon outside the spacecraft and demonstrated that it didn’t “balloon out” which would have made walking on the surface impossible. He also took it out the LM’s door and back along to the CSM proving that this could be a backup way to return astronauts in the event of a docking problem. The testing highlight was flying the LM on a simulated lunar landing profile. After reaching a distance of 115 miles from the CSM, McDivitt fired the ascent stage and returned to dock with the CSM. After four further days of CSM based testing, Apollo 9 splashed down in the Atlantic, the last U.S. crew to do so (intentionally).
After the complete success of this mission Apollo managers realized that (barring any unexpected problems) Apollo 11 would actually have a chance to land on the moon. The only downside to this mission was Schweickart’s recurring space sickness. He was the first astronaut so badly afflicted and the knowledge and protocols that were later adopted for dealing with even worse episodes were not in place. He never was placed on a prime crew position again. His colleagues believed this was unfair and that he “suffered so the rest of us could have a chance.”
Apollo 10 May 1969
Crew: Stafford (Cdr), Young (CSM), Cernan (LM)
Only two months after the success of Apollo 9 came the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing. Apollo 10 was man’s second trip to the moon and it would rehearse the mission that followed it by two months. Stafford was on his third flight and Young and Cernan on their second. This crew was assembled for their engineering and testing skills and might have been the most proficient Apollo crew ever to fly. (Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 were the only two missions to have all veteran crews.)
Apollo 10’s mission profile was simplicity in itself. Run the exact Apollo 11 mission profile to just short (8.4 miles above lunar surface) of the actual landing. The mission was timed so the practice landing run to the planned Apollo 11 location had the same lighting conditions. (You are noticing a theme here, right?) The ascent stage was light loaded with fuel so it would be at the same weight as the same point as in the actual ascent from the lunar surface. Cernan later said they were so close to Sea of Tranquility it looked like they could just reach out and touch the surface.
The mission went well except for one serious issue. The crew had accidently double loaded a command into the LM’s computer (weak computers are not your friend) and when they fired the ascent stage they started rolling. After a few tense moments, and on camera oaths, they regained control of the LM and the mission continued successfully. Years later it was revealed that the problem was more severe than NASA had publicly stated and that the crew was within several seconds of losing control and crashing into the surface.
Apollo 10 from an astronaut perspective was the true Hall of Fame crew. Only three men went to the moon twice. Young and Cernan were two of them, both of them commanding later missions and walking on the moon. (Lovell was the third two lunar mission vet.) Young was the astronaut’s astronaut with six flights. He was on the first Gemini mission, commanded Gemini X, was the CSM pilot for Apollo 10, commanded Apollo 16 and commanded the first Space Shuttle mission. For his swan song he commanded the 9th Shuttle mission. Gene Cernan commanded Apollo 17 and was the last man to have walked on the moon. Thomas Stafford flew one more mission after Apollo 10 when he commanded the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Apollo 11 July 1969
(Do I really need to list them?) Crew: Armstrong (Cdr), Collins (CSM), Aldrin (LM)
This was it. The big one. The whole enchilada. El tutti mundi. Add the whipped cream and nuts to the sundae. Yadda yadda yadda. The older Glibs need no reminding, the entire Nation was riding along with Apollo 11. The younger Glibs probably could use an introduction to the scale of Apollo. Approximately 400,000 US citizens were employed in various aspects of manufacturing or mission conduct during the Apollo program. It was a huge part of the economy. From 1961 to 1972, including Gemini and the unmanned lunar survey missions, the country spent $28B ($169B in 2018 dollars) on Apollo. The entire world followed Apollo 11. A higher percentage of the world’s population watched or listened to Armstrong step onto the moon than any other event before or since. Florida’s Atlantic coast was filled for miles and miles with 100,000s of people who came to watch the launch. Hell, e Dbleagle’s father even sprung for a color TV to watch Apollo. He was among the 400,000 working on Apollo. His personal stake in Apollo was helping to design and inspect a set turbine blades in the LM’s descent module.
For all the scientists, engineers and programmers of Apollo this was what years of work were culminating in. All the theories, all the testing, all the inspections were coming down to this. As Buzz Aldrin put it, “Can we really pull this shit off?” The mission profile had been rehearsed in Earth orbit (9) and various aspects in lunar orbit (8 and 10), now the mystery of the last 8.4 miles were to be filled in.
This was a specially selected crew of all veterans. Armstrong had a military background but was a civilian member of the Gemini class. He commanded Gemini VIII on his first flight, made the first successful docking of two spacecraft and then saved the mission (and their lives) by skillfully stopping unexpected rolling after a thruster stuck open. Later while training for Apollo 11 he survived a literal last 2 second ejection from the LM landing trainer. He caused a significant stir among the other astronauts by immediately going back to work after lunch. Aldrin was “Doctor Rendezvous” and not the best guy to have around at parties. He was well known for buttonholing anybody at a party to talk about rendezvous procedures. Admittedly a difficult procedure but would you want your wife trapped in a corner while a coworker discussed Sugar Free stories in infinite detail? But Aldrin had cracked the code on how to do a successful EVA and if somebody had to piece together getting the LM and CSM back together in the event of an “ahh shit” moment he would be the guy. Collins had worked on the CSM since the beginning and was thought highly enough to had been the original primary for Apollo 8. Collins later said when he had been tapped as the CSM pilot for A8 he knew he would probably never walk on the moon because of his skills with the CSM.
Why the Sea of Tranquility? Well it was the easiest and most boring spot to land a mission. Remember incremental steps. If Apollo 11 was to answer Aldrin’s question it meant going “How easy can we make this landing thing?” Put it near the equator, with no mountains on the approach or nearby, no big craters, valleys or other stuff and close to lunar dawn so the features would stand out. Plus if something went wrong the short and long areas were flat and open as well. This meant the potential launch window opened up since the window for the primary site was less than twenty-four hours. Tranquility Base fit those requirements perfectly.
Most Apollo missions had issues during launch until landing (or not landing- cough Apollo 13 cough) but for Apollo 11 the trip to the moon was surprisingly textbook, until it came time to land. Now the shitbucket started filling up- and fast. Computers overloaded with data and started blaring warnings, the Eagle was coming in long and steering directly for a crater. Armstrong took over and manually flew the LM and landed with seconds of fuel before the abort point was reached.
Watch it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RONIax0_1ec&app=desktop At home we only heard snippets and no video. We never saw the contact light come on, the descent engine shut down or the LM as it falls the last three feet to the surface. We heard clipped language and suddenly there was a pause, “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”-and the world erupted. Throughout the world people rejoiced.** It was an impossible moment, but it just happened and we listened to it. My great grandfather called to congratulate my dad. My great grandfather was born in a dirt poor Calabrian village before the Wright brothers and now his grandson had designed part of the “wonderful machine” on the moon. During a break in the hours before the EVA I took my young Quarter Eagle personage outside with my telescope to look at a moon with men on it. It looked the same, but I knew just over from the terminator (line between day and night) there were two people and that made it different from any time in the history of the human species.
Much of the EVA was difficult to see on TV. But the world watched the blurry black and white images. Unlike the later missions which traversed increasing segments of the lunar surface this was “Can we pull this shit off?” and nothing was known. The best minds available had ideas, tested and formed hypotheses, but here was the first chance to live test. The suits worked, bunny hopping became the preferred method to move, the surface dust layer was thinner than thought. Houston extended the EVA because consumption of oxygen was lower than thought and the cooling system worked more efficiently than believed. Everything took longer than thought as well so the astronauts were working harder and faster until Houston saw their respiration rates climbing too much and let them know to slow down. Finally, after around 2 hours Aldrin followed by Armstrong re-entered the LM an sealed the door. It is estimated that 600,000,000 people watched the EVA. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC3ncS-wXXI&app=desktop The total area explored was about the size of a baseball diamond.
Apollo 11 Landing Site
Here are a few photos of the EVA. Armstrong took almost all the pictures so the best photo of him is when he was reflected on Aldrin’s facemask.
First Photo from Lunar SurfaceFirst Panorama After LandingHome from the SurfaceArmstrong Reflected in Aldrin’s Facemask (LM Pad and Contact Rod in Foreground)
Much like on Shepard’s Mercury mission, when ya gotta go-ya gotta go. So Aldrin did. As he later said, “Neil took the first step on the moon, but I had my own first as well.” After the EVA the crew had a sleep period which did not go well and forced NASA to think up a better plan for later missions. The crew had just achieved the crowning moment of their professional lives and the sleep plan was “sleep on the floor.” All through the rest period A&A were keyed up, aware that they were 250,000 miles from home and the LM vented, turned on and off various pumps, motors and whatnot which they noticed. Plus even at 1/6 gravity a metal floor was not comfortable. Sleep was poor and badly fragmented.
The “aw shit” moments weren’t over for LM crew. During EVA prep or recovery a backpack unit snapped off a critical switch. If the crew couldn’t figure out a way to flip the switch there would be no take off. Aldrin partially disassembled a pen and used a piece jammed into the console to flip the switch at the required time. They docked with Columbia and transferred 47.5 pounds of lunar material and returned home without incident- or did they?
The ten minutes hanging upside after splashdown until the inflation bags righted the Columbia was almost to be expected. Part of the safety protocol to save the world from an “Andromeda Strain” incident was to seal the astronauts, all lunar material and all material exposed to lunar material in a quarantine. So there were intricate procedures to put everything into isolation bags. The crew was kept in a closed environment with a med team for three weeks. So far so good, until somebody noticed one of the bags was forgotten and had remained outside of quarantine for several days. The answer? Crack open the door and chunk the bag in.
After getting clearance that they would not bring Armageddon upon the Earth the crew of Apollo 11 was released and then started what has been described as a version of hell by all three men. NASA sent them on a Nation- and world-wide goodwill tour. All three men were private people by nature (less so for Aldrin) and this tour quickly wore them down. The crew was described by Aldrin as “amiable strangers”. They remained friendly but were not regulars at each other’s casas. Armstrong and Aldrin knew they would never fly in space again but Collins was told he could command a later mission. He decided that the training demands were too much and said if Apollo 11 was successful he was done.
So Apollo 11 answered Aldrin’s question. The US could pull off this shit. Besides bringing back the samples and photos from the surface Apollo 11 left an instrument package on the moon. The laser reflector is still used to this day to make precise distance measurements.
** The North Vietnamese did not rejoice and knew that the Apollo missions would raise the morale of the POW’s. So they ensured no word of Apollo reached the POW’s ears. They only found out after later pilots were shot down and captured. The Viet’s were correct. The success of Apollo did raise the prisoners’ morale.
Lunar Recon Orbiter Photo (2011) of Tranquility Base with tracks and instruments visible
Apollo 12 November 1969
Crew: Conrad (Cdr), Gordon (CSM), Bean (LM)
While being on any Apollo crew would have been a highlight of any Glibs life, this would have been the most awesome crew to be on. The three were known for their good humor with everybody they worked with and were routinely involved in hijinks (and matching Corvettes). The three remained close friends for the rest of their lives. Success during this engineering mission was critical to the remaining science missions visiting much more interesting areas than flat mare landing sites. This mission was also the victim of too much success too quickly for the Apollo program.
Pete Conrad was in the Mercury selection program until he rebelled against the invasive biological testing by leaving his stool sample in a gift-wrapped box for the medical staff. Even though he was not selected he was encouraged to apply again by Alan Shepard and was selected in the Gemini Class. He flew on Gemini V and commanded Gemini XI. GXI used the docked Agena as a booster to change their orbit to 850 miles, which is still the highest low Earth orbit flown by man. Richard Gordon was a long time friend of Pete Conrad from their time in the Navy. He also flew with Conrad on Gemini XI doing two EVA’s during the mission. Al Bean was the FNG on his first flight but had quickly bonded with the two old friends.
So Apollo 11 showed we could land in a huge open flat area. But to explore geologically interesting areas precision landing was required. Apollo 12 was that test. The chosen landing area had been intentionally crashed into by a Ranger mission, landed on by Surveyor 3, and accidently crashed landed by a Soviet mission. It was nicknamed “Pete’s Parking Lot” since Apollo 12’s mission was to land near Surveyor 3 to prove precision landing navigation was possible. The mission also was to test more extended durations on the surface since they would conduct multiple EVA’s. The crew would also test the sleeping hammocks to see if good sleep was possible on the lunar surface.
Remember when I said Apollo 11 had been lucky on their way to the moon? Apollo 12 wasn’t. The skies were overcast and 36.5 seconds after launch the Saturn V was hit by lightning and started losing systems. The stack was hit again at 52 seconds and more systems started dropping out. The instrument unit atop of stage 3 (remember it from earlier?) continued to function keeping the stack upright and accelerating. One young engineer remembered an obscure command that wasn’t part of the procedures book and the FNG executed the command which cycled the system and brought all the systems back online. All this excitement was while the first stage fired away. After a careful check of the systems Apollo 12 fired for trans lunar insertion. Houston decided not to inform the crew that the lightning may have screwed up the Command Module parachutes since there was no backup. You can’t see the strikes because of the clouds but can hear the crew and ground here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWQIryll8y8 or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i6yD2c2Jho
Apollo 12 successfully conducted their first mission when they landed just over 360 yards from Surveyor 3. This is the only time that mankind has landed, manned or unmanned, alongside an earlier mission. Like Apollo 11 the Apollo 12 crew took control and moved the landing site. Here is the landing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFSa6vUix70&app=desktop
The EVA’s went well with one major OOPS. NASA had upgraded to color TV for Apollo 12 but Bean accidently pointed the TV at the Sun while setting it up. This exposure fried the tube and that was the end of TV transmissions. When the team arrived at S3 they removed some parts to bring home but failed in one unstated mission. The crew lived up to its joker reputation by sneaking a camera timer to the moon. The plan was to use it to take an unannounced photo with both astronauts in the frame and let the scientists at home try to figure out how the crew did it. Unfortunately the timer couldn’t be found in the equipment bag until too late for use. Bean would not be your first choice for President of the AV Club since he fried the TV and accidently left a couple of exposed rolls of film on the surface.
Apollo 12 site from the LRO (2011)Conrad at Surveyor 3 with LM in Background (Too bad the prank at this spot didn’t happen)Bean Stepping off LM
The backup crew caught the spirit of the prime crew and smuggled Playboy centerfolds into the checklists worn during EVA 1 (and for Gordon on the CSM for his solo orbits). The checklists (and all sorts of other mission information for all the lunar landings) are available here: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/main.html
Checklist Page with Additional Visual Aid
Apollo 12 set up a series of instruments designed for long term use. As part of the testing, after they re-boarded the CSM the LM was crashed into the lunar surface where the seismograph recorded the impact. On the way home the crew experienced an unique eclipse when the Earth eclipsed the Sun. One last OOPs happened when a camera broke free at splashdown hitting Bean in the head (helmets were no longer worn thanks to Apollo 7) knocking him briefly unconscious and required six stiches to close.
Conrad was selected to command the first manned Skylab mission and led the effort repair Skylab for habitation. On an EVA he used the “Warty method” aka brute force to open one solar panel and followed that up by adding a sun umbrella/micrometeoroid to Skylab so it could be inhabited. Al Bean then commanded the second manned Skylab. Gordon was selected to command Apollo 18, but more about that in a bit.
In the 1990s I had a chance to enjoy a pleasant 30 minutes with Pete Conrad. My son was on a major Star Wars kick and wanted to visit a SciFi event. My then wife wanted a quiet Saturday so I was elected to take both kids to Santa Barbara for the day to attend. As is normal (I guess. I only went to one of these events.) there was a chance for autographs from the SciFi shows and the lines were huge for the TV actors. Off to one side was a grey haired man sitting almost alone at a table. As I wandered up I saw the sign saying it was Conrad. We started talking Gemini, Apollo and Skylab (mainly A12) for almost 30 minutes until people came up to hustle him off to an event. At the last second I grabbed a couple of signatures for my kids. To this day I am confused by that event. Here was the 3rd man on the moon, a veteran of 4 space flights, and an engaging and humorous person. I had a chance for a half hour conversation with only a couple of brief interruptions because people were choosing to stand in lines for an autograph from an actor. People are weird.
Next Steps for Apollo
In the decade leading up to the lunar landings all things space were the rage throughout American society. The space effort was everywhere in culture. It was in radio, TV shows (“I Dream of Jeannie” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRNwv8opJT0 Is it just me or does Larry Hagman resemble Tom Brady?), Snoopy gave up on the Red Baron and became an astronaut, worldwide advertising for just about anything, GI Joe and Barbie both had astronaut versions, plastic models, model rocketry, drinks, food (“Space Food Sticks” and “Tang”), motels, you name it- the space themes were there. But Apollo 11 popped the popularity balloon. Space was old, the new thing was environmentalism, spurred on in part by Anders image from Apollo 8.
NASA had four successful lunar flights in 11 months. They made the entire enterprise seem routine when anybody involved in the program knew the risks and close calls that were avoided. While the entire planet thrilled to Apollo 11 the overall view of Apollo 12 was: “Why are we still doing this since we already beat the Russians?” Bringing home more rocks (~75 lbs) and used metal from an unmanned lander seemed not worth the cost to an increasing number of Americans. Apollo 13 was to be the first science focused mission because this stuff was now routine.
Apollo had been conceived to run through Apollo 20 and the required ASV systems had already been purchased. By when Apollo 12 returned, the Apollo 20 mission was cancelled and in 1971 Apollos 18 and 19 were scrapped. (Sorry Gordon) After Apollo 15 returned Nixon tried to scrap the remaining two missions but was convinced to conduct them by Caspar Weinberger.
The early missions proved man could work on the lunar surface. The biggest scientific findings from Apollo 11 and 12 killed the lunar capture theory. The moon is almost unique in the Solar System. It is larger in proportion to the host planet than anywhere else (except for Pluto/Charon). If the moon was captured then the chemistry of the rocks should show a different base chemistry. The rocks from Apollo showed the rocks chemistry to be very similar to Earth in most respects. This brought increased examination of the impact theory. Summarized: Early in the Solar System a Mars sized object hit a glancing blow on Earth, badly shattering both. The debris that was flung into a low orbit and rapidly impacted together forming the Moon. More easy detail here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon
Now let the serious Selenology commence! To be continued……
After a very pleasant week of quiet and recovery we got the call, Denver, CO! Four weeks of lighting and troubleshooting at the Chase building in Downtown, Yikes! They also requested my trouble/son to go, so we reset and off we go…..
Flagstaff was uneventful, probably because it was one night only. I stopped to get a few Tall Cans at the gas station, looked in, saw black cans with the AB logo and said, “Cobra” then I checked in to find I bought Natty Ice, Blaaaaggh! It still worked. We left Flagstaff at nine AM, and the son and wife blaze ahead in Kia Korean Kar, while Bella and I mosey in the OMWC van, do, do, do…..
All of a sudden I hear brrrrr, BANG! The left rear let go at 70 mph, but the core held long enough to get off the I-40, in Nowhere, 35 miles west of Gallup NM. I have a spare, then I went looking for a jack, no. I call for very expensive towing into Gallup, and spend 3 hours waiting for the Indians who run Firestone service center to change one tire! Back in Cali, it’s 20 minutes at the local llanteria, stereotypes gonna be stereotypes I guess, I lost 5 hours, and the crew was in ABQ waiting for gas money, so, off we go.
Castle Rock, CO.
We landed at Super 8 after a 16 hour tour, a 16 hour tour……….. and they were sold out, even though I have a guaranteed reservation with my card, part of the bargain you see. After some haggling, we crashed in a single til the morning, and here we are, in our double, POS room.
Until then, I had not considered when we were going to be in CO, then it hit me, Independence Day, and a glorious light show courtesy of God daily, what’s not to love.
The drive into Denver is no worse than L.A., and back is a breeze at 4 AM. I also traded out my OMWC van for the best thing of all, a Kia Sedona minivan!
It fits all my stuff and I have room to spare. Where we are staying, we have an indoor gun range, 2 breweries, 2 liquor stores, Jack in the Box, Mc D’s and a laundromat, don’t forget the smoke shop, all within ¼ mile of our pad, oh yeah, Waffle House and Village Idiot for foodie stuff, convenient to be sure….
After settling in, Yusef goes straight outside to wait for rain, and here it comes, lightning, hail and floods of yummy moisture from the sky. I love it. Every day, the same thing, work, walk the dog, beer and Glibs, until…
Hey, Baby, it’s the Fourth of July….
The wife loves sparklers, and being broke, and in a motel I thought I best stick with a few hundred of them and not buy any blowy-uppy things, I knew I wouldn’t need them anyway, not here. There is a definite Motel Culture, a few people decided to BBQ, then others brought meats and chips and….. I brought the Sparklers.
What started as a few ended up with half the motel enjoying Independence Day together, as Americans, sharing and still living well despite our living conditions, and handing out Sparklers to the kids is mine and the wife’s great joys in life, FIRE!!!
Start ’em young! This has been a highlight of our trip to far, change is afoot however, but we shall leave that til next time,
I started living in a motel at the end of April, due mostly to my evil BiL; we can come back to that, it’s irrelevant to the story right now. I acquired a smoking deal through my company lodging card, and the boss approved several weeks on the company dime, since I wasn’t getting the hours I needed and it seems they need me.
After about 4.5 weeks my son found a “person” and due to her nature she was not allowed on the property, little did I know. So a Tuesday comes around, I’m 90 miles south and the phone rings; it’s the wife telling me they are kicking us out Now! and I need to come back, so I did. It turns out my company card was declined, and the lady/whore was the last straw, so we bounced….
Now the fun part is “we” means myself, my power chair bound wife, my son (also my apprentice), my dog Bella, my 20 year old cat, and for a while, my granddaughter Riley.
Electric Gypsy Caravan. We have the typical unmarked white van, and of course Kia Korean Kar!!!
Things again had to be pared down and stored after we were kicked out of ESA, and a bunch of stuff went into our already packed storage units, but still we go on.
Tomorrow we head north to Santa Clara.
Santa Clara was a 3 day trip that turned into a 7 day nightmare of blown tires, missing parts and incompetent contractors; glad we left, up north is nuts. From then ’til now it’s been a constant move from place to place, we have spent 6 days at the Motel 6 in Hesperia, dog friendly, and the people are nice.
We are too old for this, the money is enough to keep us going, barely, and we are tired; what an Adventure! We left Son behind, he was too attached to his woman of the night, and things are much more chill, but hey, Road!
San Dimas.
Parked again, maybe for a week, maybe a day, ’til next time, Cheers!
I am an engineer. That means I live a pretty boring life. I go to work; I sit at a desk; I stare at a computer; some days I write stuff. Occasionally, I have to travel somewhere to talk to people about the stuff I write.
In the middle ’90s, circumstances required me to travel to Moscow 19 times to talk about the stuff I wrote back then. Yes, it was exactly 19 times. After 15 or 16 times, I began to think that maybe I didn’t need to keep exact count. Then one day while waiting to clear customs to check in with the airline to fly home (yeah, you need to clear customs before you can even talk to the airline staff), I was chatting with another guy. He mentioned he was on his 35th trip to Moscow. So, I guess you never actually stop counting.
I was there during the boring times. In other words, the middle of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency. Some of my co-workers were lucky, they got to be in country when Boris was standing on the tank yelling at the people who wanted to overthrow the government. The leadership of the company we were working with took my co-workers out to the countryside and “hosted” them at their dachas for an extended stay. Somehow a work trip turned into a paid vacation. Lucky bastards. I mean, who gets to visit a real, authentic dacha in post-Soviet Russia?
In contrast, I only had to worry about the Chechens, who had started bombing the subways and buses while I was making multiple trips to Moscow. But the bombings in the middle ’90s were chickenshit; the real stuff with the Chechens wouldn’t start until much later, i.e., the late ’90s. Still, it was a recurring issue at the breakfast table each day — take a taxi to work and hope you weren’t robbed and murdered by the cabbie or take the subway or trolleys and hope you weren’t blown up by the Chechens. Realistically, it was a low probability either way, but at least the company insurance would pay out double for a death occurring on company travel.
This was also the time when the mob came out of hiding. One day, on the way back to the hotel after a day of meetings, I got to see a minor spectacle in the hotel parking lot. Some collection of mobsters had murdered another mobster in his Mercedes in the parking lot. The Russians have a slightly different take on human dignity. They don’t bother to cover bodies with sheets. Instead, the police just dragged the body out of the bullet-ridden Mercedes and laid him out on the lawn.
The bellhop in the lobby assured me that everything was OK, because the mob respected the hotel I was staying at as evidenced by the hit taking place in the parking lot instead of the mobsters shooting the victim in the hotel lobby like they did the month before in downtown Moscow (at a 4-star business hotel).
When I got back to my room, I could look down from ten stories at the Mercedes, the body, and the police who came and went for the next two hours before someone finally came to haul away the corpse. As usual, the end of the day in Moscow is the beginning of the day back home, so there was the normal phone call to the office to discuss status and talk about what little progress was achieved during the meetings with the Russians. The call started with the normal chit-chat, how’s it going, etcetera. So, I said, not too bad. The meetings were productive. By the way, I am looking out my window and staring at the corpse of a murdered mobster stretched out on the lawn in front of the hotel. And the weather is pretty good today, but I think will stay in at the hotel for dinner tonight.
By this time, I have made the transition from newbie who has no idea how anything in Russia works, to the old guy in charge of keeping newbies from getting into trouble because they have no idea how anything in Russia works. One piece of advice that I was given early on was to photocopy my passport and visa before traveling to Moscow and then to lock the real passport and visa in the hotel safe on arrival. American passports were a valuable commodity in Russia at that time. And after having my pocket picked on two separate occasions in Moscow, the wisdom of that advice had settled in. So, I passed that advice on to the new guy who was about to make his first trip to Moscow.
Ah, yes, the new guy. Imagine a ginger version of Alfred E. Neuman with less personality. He talked incessantly, while never, ever saying anything worth paying attention to. We were going to Moscow on a 9-day trip in late January or early February, meaning I was going to be trapped with the guy during the worst weather of the year over the weekend with pretty much nothing to do. So, it was going to be a long, long trip if everything went well.
Before we left, I gave him all the basics. Inflation is running rampant in Russia. The exchange rate has gone from 4000 rubles per dollar to 5000 rubles per dollar in about a year’s time. Only a handful of businesses will take credit cards. And when they do, they want to charge in dollars. And most Russian businesses don’t want to take rubles; they want hard currency – American dollars or German marks. Street vendors will take rubles, but you really don’t want to buy any food from a street vendor. So, you’ll have to carry several hundred dollars in brand new, small bills (the Russians will refuse torn and tattered bills). Don’t dress like an American. No blue jeans; no sneakers; no fancy micro-fiber, down-filled parkas. I don’t care how cold it is going to be. You wear a wool coat or a leather jacket, plain twill pants, and basic leather work shoes. Oh, and the Russians don’t wear hats in winter. If it is really bad they’ll put on a ushanka (the fur hat with the ear flaps), but they never use the ear flaps. {One day it’s -25 C, and the local engineer is not using the ear flaps. He says it’s not cold enough yet}. Don’t take any taxi from the street. Call the hotel and have them send a taxi if you really need one. And don’t forget, photocopy your passport and visa, then lock them in the hotel safe as soon as we check in.
So, I get Alfred into Moscow on a Tuesday and get him to his meetings each day and to dinner each night for the first couple of days. Finally, it’s Friday; the jet lag is starting to wear off; and we have a long dreary weekend ahead of us. Time for a decent meal and some American kitsch – off to Planet Hollywood Moscow we go.
I’ve been there several times by now, and it’s easy enough to get there. We walk half a mile from the hotel down to a major subway station that has five or six trolley lines radiating out. A fifteen-minute ride on one of the trolleys gets us two blocks from Planet Hollywood. Then it’s just a quick walk down to the restaurant. It should have been easy.
Alfred is a late 30s, college-educated engineer who is making the transition to project management. He is supposedly a bright guy that can understand and follow simple directions. And yet on this frigid Moscow night, the ginger with the big ears is wearing a lovely London Fog trench coat, pin-stripe suit pants, and highly-polished wingtips. He doesn’t exactly look Russian. And as we are walking towards Planet Hollywood, a young man in a military uniform steps out of the shadows and makes a beeline for Alfred jabbering in Russian all the way over. I have just enough Russian to understand he is asking for Alfred’s papers. I say hello or something innocuous to the officer, and he realizes that I am not Russian either. He demands my papers, and I offer up my photocopied passport and visa. The officer is not happy with my photocopies, but I explain that they real papers are at the hotel. He scowls and shoves my photocopies back at me, then turns to Alfred.
Alfred is staring blankly with a stupid grin on his face. I tell him to show his photocopies to the officer. Alfred says that he doesn’t have any photocopies with him. So, I ask him where they are. He says he didn’t make any. Ok, so where is your real passport and visa. Uh, they’re in the safe at the hotel. Why are they at hotel – you know you can’t walk around Moscow without these papers right. Uh no, why is that. Because you’re a foreigner in a foreign land remember.
While we are talking, the Russian officer is getting short tempered and demanding to see Alfred’s papers. So, I try to explain to the officer that Alfred’s papers are at the hotel. The officer has had enough, and he grabs Alfred by the arm and starts pulling him towards that back of the building we are standing in front of. I follow behind asking what is going on. The officer tries repeatedly to shoo me away, but eventually gives up.
We walk through a door at the back of the building, and I see that we have entered some sort of miniature police station. There is a counter on our left and a jail cell on the right. There are three grimy old dudes and one college student in the cell. It is still early on Friday night, and yet all are seriously inebriated. Behind the counter is the stereotypical police sergeant – a tyrant in his own little kingdom. He stands and walks to the counter, then he starts a heated conversation with the officer that has dragged Alfred into the station. The drunks in the cell are watching as intently as they can given their limited ability to focus.
Both the sergeant and the officer turn to Alfred and start asking questions in Russian. Alfred continues to grin stupidly while understanding nothing that is going on. The college student staggers over to the bars of the cell and speaks to us in broken English; he volunteers to translate for us. He tells us that the sergeant is asking for Alfred’s papers. I explain that Alfred has locked his papers in the hotel safe and does not have them on his person. It is his first trip to Moscow, and he has made a mistake. The student translates my answer for the sergeant, but the sergeant is visibly disdainful. We have several iterations of the sergeant demanding Alfred’s papers and me explaining that Alfred doesn’t have them on his person – all by way of drunken college kid. Finally, I get an idea, and I suggest the sergeant call the hotel to verify that Alfred is a registered guest there.
He stops talking for a moment as he thinks about my suggestion. While he is deep in thought, I reach into my wallet and pull out the business card for the hotel. There is paper and a pen on the counter. So, I write out Alfred’s name in phonetic Russian. The sergeant picks up the business card and reads Alfred’s name from the paper. He shrugs his shoulders, reaches for the phone, and dials the hotel.
Think of every old movie you’ve ever seen with a Russian officer bellowing into a telephone. It’s real. He stands up straighter, puffs out his chest, and raises his volume three notches. The only part I can understand is him spelling Alfred’s name over and over into the phone. Eventually, he stops talking and listens for a short while. He puts down the phone, turns, and starts berating Alfred. The drunken student can’t keep up, but it appears the sergeant is going to let Alfred go. The officer we came in with gestures towards the door. I start pushing Alfred from behind.
Once we are back outside, the officer is all smiles and wishes us a good evening. He even helps us walk carefully over some icy patches, then waves as we head towards the street. Alfred is still grinning stupidly; he is somehow blissfully unaware that he almost spent the entire weekend in a Russian jail.
At the street, Alfred turns to head down to Planet Hollywood. I ask him where the hell he thinks he’s going. He says to the restaurant. I say hell no, we’re going back to the hotel. Why he asks. Because, you almost got lost in the Russian legal system. Assuming we could even find you, it would be Monday at the earliest before anyone would be able to get you out. Nah, he says, everything worked out fine. I tell him whatever, but I am taking him back to the hotel. Once we’re there, he can do whatever he wants. Back at the hotel, I make Alfred get his passport and visa from the hotel safe while I wait with him. I tell he can’t leave the hotel without them. By the way, if they get stolen, you’re really fucked. So be careful.
We have dinner in the hotel bar. I explain, as though talking to a 6-year-old, that logic and reason don’t exist in Russia. I remind him that Winston Churchill said Russia was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. I get blank face and a stupid grin in response. I don’t think he ever got it.
Every time we leave the hotel for the next week, I ask him if he has his passport and visa. Surprisingly, he doesn’t complain; he just nods yes and grins. I got him home in one piece at the end of the trip. I never traveled with him again. He made a couple more trips to Moscow without getting himself arrested and starting an international incident. So, he must have learned something. Or perhaps the gods occasionally take pity on the idiots of the world.
I only made one or two more trips to Moscow after this. My boss picked up a new project to watch over, and he dragged me into as punishment I suppose. There’s no other justification for being forced to work with the French. On several occasions, with important people in the room, I said the French made me miss working with the Russians. Although, the wine was much better.
Viva Las Vegas, it’s a film, a song, and one of the longest running Rockabilly weekenders in the world. What’s Rockabilly? It’s a style of music that started in the 50’s (primarily in Memphis at a little studio called Sun), had a revival in the 80’s, and has been slapping a bass since then. It’s split up into a huge range of subgenres, some going more punk, others going more “classic” (in this case 1950’s style). Among the fans, there’s also usually an appreciation of classic cars, 50’s fashion, and Americana culture. Pompadours, facial hair, flatcaps, and tattoos are common.
Back to Viva… this year was the 22nd year that the event was held, and for as long as I’ve been going, it’s been held at the Orleans Casino and Resort in Las Vegas, off the strip. The Orleans is known as a locals casino. But over most Easter weekends (when Viva is held), they turn off the standard music, change it over to Rockabilly, and swarms of people with their classic cars and finest 50’s fashion fall upon the Orleans. The event is popular enough that rooms for the next year go on sale before the tickets for the event do, and the rooms sell out in under three hours.
The men have it easy, bowling shirts and work shirts are the standard, with a couple of zoot suits and the like being worn. If you have hair, it’s either a high and tight or held up into a pompadour. The women have a much harder time dolling themselves up, but they go through the work and it shows. However, there are some entire families who dress themselves up in matching garb for the day (I’m not too sure about how much say the kids have, but they’re there).
The Car Show is the highlight. If you can only go for a single day, this is the day.
Over the course of the weekend, there’s burlesque shows, pinup contests, concerts, DJ’s, vendor rooms, dance lessons, make up lessons, fashion lessons, bowling, movie premiers, and other shows of interest to the attendees. And that’s not even mentioning the car show, it’s massive, with all cars (except the ones from movies/TV shows) being pre-1964. If you’re not careful, you could walk away purchasing one of the cars that are for sale.
Now that you know what’s going on there, you’ve decided you want to go. Great, what should you plan for? First, plan on walking a lot. I don’t think I’ve walked less than 5 miles any day out there. Realize that you’ll probably not be able to get a room at the Orleans; however, keep in mind that they have a shuttle to their sister property (the Gold Coast), and the strip. Tickets for the main event come in basically two choices: The High Roller, which gives you access to everything all weekend; or the Car Show, which gives you access to the car show only on Saturday (that will include the vendors in that area, and the bands playing there). If you don’t have appropriate garb, then the vendors will be more than happy to help you out there, but bring cash as some do not take credit/debit cards..
Sweet Pea’s Hooch and Smooch
If you’re going for the first time, I’d recommend going to Sweet Pea’s Hooch and Smooch on Thursday afternoon. It’s the official meet and greet for the event, and then there’s more specific meetups for singles, LGBT, sober, black pin-ups, etc. I’d also recommend looking over the schedule ahead of time, and try to at least get a rough schedule of the events you want to see. Personally, I’d recommend at least one burlesque event, and the Charles Phoenix slide show. Most of the shows happen multiple times (but may be different for each of them), bands usually only play once, but then hang out around the weekender for the rest (I met one of the players from Los Straitjackets that way, it’s not like you can recognize them).
I’ve already got my room booked for next year, and I hope to see some of you there. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s some pictures from this year, and some from years past.
My train journey continued through tea country. The terraces weren’t nearly as wet as the rice paddies in Southeast Asia but their structure was similar. As a Midwestern boy used to corn and soybeans, the overlaying latticework of crops contrasted heavily with the table-top farms of southern Indiana.
Due to both the landscape and the nature of the tea bushes, it is difficult or impossible to mechanize the harvest. Instead, groups of women with bags strapped to their foreheads pick the tea by hand. The man there to supervise them emanated overtones of plantation slavery. I’m not sure if he deserves that reaction or not. That’s one of the difficulties traveling to new cultures. Moral navigation can be tricky.
I finally arrived in Ella. It was gorgeous and soothing, but also the definition of how the journey is frequently more important than the destination. It’s a small town nestled in the lowlands. I mostly remember my late night walks on the dirt roads. The jungle sounds were the soundtrack in my mosquito-netted bed. The next day I went to see a waterfall a short tuk tuk ride away. Its beauty gave me pause and contrasted with the urban and urbane landscape I was used to in Singapore. The simplicity of flowing water made me happy.
From here I went down to Yala National Park on the southern coast to go on safari. I stayed in a tent, but a fancy one with a shower and 300-thread-count sheets. As I’ve aged I’ve graduated to more luxurious settings.
The park is quite arid and reminded me of Arizona. Craggy rocks, brush–an earthy moonscape with sparse greenery. Think tumbleweeds. The elephant skull that greeted me was a great example of why Ancient Greeks believed in cyclopes.
We drove through the park in a Jeep. I soaked in the terrain and encountered water buffalo, elephants, meter-long monitor lizards and troops of monkeys playfully gathering fruit. We soon were clogged in a traffic jam of fellow visitors. A leopard was resting in the shade and everyone was desperate for a glance. She was about 500 yards away, visible with our guide’s binoculars, but not with my camera, sadly.
The park borders the ocean. I do like fishermen and boats. I don’t know why. I don’t like being on the water. Flimsy wooden vessels with old engines popping oil as they chugged along. Honest folk doing honest work to provide for their families. Teaching English in Korea, I viewed my work as being very supplementary. It’s humbling to watch people do something so essential. It reminds me that mine is a life of luxury, and how almost everyone in the world has it worse off than I do. It reinforces why I refuse to complain until bone pierces skin.
On our way, elephants blocked the path. This is perhaps the best reason to have to stop your vehicle. The people in the Jeep ahead of us were idiots–they had left a bunch of mangos out in their open cab and agile trunks were being forcefully frisky about obtaining them. A backpack was ripped from the vehicle by the tremendous animal.
After my stay at the park, I continued clockwise around the coast to Galle–a 16th century Portuguese fortification. It is very reminiscent of Spanish forts in Florida. I briefly met up with my coworker here for dinner on a chance encounter. We had pasta.
Galle was very dreamlike. I knew I was in Sri Lanka but it felt so European. I felt the same way in Montreal when my brain thought I was in Paris. You have to jolt yourself into understanding reality. It’s like when your eyes and inner ear don’t agree and you get dizzy–it was difficult for Evan in Wonderland to parse out the alien familiarity of his surroundings. He walked around the stone walls calmly, tired after traveling for a week straight. Surrounded by an eerie silence, Evan was able to absorb vibrations you otherwise ignore.
He loved the fortifications. How the earthworks strengthened the short, fat stone walls. Being alone gave him time to think about how fort design changed as offensive technology advanced. High walls keep out foot soldiers. Cannon destroy high walls. Fat walls stop cannon. Foot soldiers storm low walls. And so on. An endless game of paper, rock, scissors.
He walked by a schoolyard where some boys were playing cricket. Someone overthrew the ball and it bounced higgeldy-piggeldy on the cobblestone. Athletically scooping it up, Evan relayed it back onto the pitch. He assumed they were astounded by his ability.
I woke up with a pleasant calm. As perfect as it was, I knew my trip was over and it was time to go home. I took a train up the southwest coast back to the airport in Colombo. One was wiped out here on the same route in the 2004 tsunami. About 1700 people died upon derailment, the deadliest train accident in history. Apparently the waves were ten feet over the top of the train car. They all drowned.
Three months after this trip, my coworker and infrequent travel partner–through friends of friends–became acquainted with my then-girlfriend. My ex thought that I had been cheating. The flint needed to ignite our inevitable downfall was sparked.
I was wholly innocent of cheating on her, but I did make the mistake of not being candid with her, and many others to boot. Our loose knot, tied with frayed rope, was too fragile for any further stress. I thought that my lie-by-omission wasn’t so bad and that it could save us, even if only for a stupid short while.
We treaded water in choppy waves for the next few months before getting too much in our lungs. My bad judgment finished the trick that so many nasty nights and thrown knives couldn’t. Knowing that this trip was the final strain is harsh and biting.
Looking back, we were both the problem. I’m not trying to throw her under the bus–if anything I was the biggest obstacle to our solvency. But it was like being bound by superglue–we had to sacrifice a layer of flesh to separate from one another.
*****
Adventures are such for a reason. Their nature involves severing ties to the familiar and the comfortable, all in order to grasp at something new.
I finally was able to tick off another box that I had squared as a child. I will never be able to divorce this trip from the dissolution of something that singular, but time has worn away that coarse stone. It’s been polished into an irregular, yet beautiful obloid of a memory.
In the last part of this series, I mentioned that the Burning Man attendees are the event. There are many ways in which this fact manifests, but the most prominent ways are theme camps and artwork. But what exactly is a “theme camp”?
In short, a theme camp is a group of burners who bring an offering to the playa. They are interactive, open to the public, and of course they’re free. There is no specified set of rules on what a theme camp can be offering, but the nature of the camp will generally determine placement based on the whims of the BMOrg.
As with everything else related to Burning Man, the concept of theme camps has evolved over the years. Back in the day before anyone I knew personally went to the event, you just showed up with your camp and set up whatever you wanted, however you wanted. This was also back in the days when you could drive around in a Jeep shooting guns into the air, dig holes in the ground to fill with gasoline and set ablaze, and engage in all sorts of otherwise fun anarchy.
This changed as the event grew, particularly after the 1997 burn which was apparently “terrifying”. Growing demands from the government resulted in most of the changes, though a few things like a ban on handheld lasers came from the BMOrg without being forced upon them. As far as theme camps go, it used to be a completely different and mostly random structure every year with no clue what you would get. Once certain groups started showing up regularly and bringing more or less the same camp every time, placement disputes started cropping up with multiple groups wanting the same location. Sometimes a camp would show up to find one person had staked out the entire area for themselves.
They addressed with issue with camp placement. For as long as I’ve been a burner, the prime real estate has been reserved for camps which apply to the BMOrg for space. If you want a premium location in the city, which is redefined to cover broader swaths every year, you have to draw up a design for your camp and submit the plans to the BMOrg along with a description of what you’ll be offering. The more closely you adhere to the 10 principles the more likely you are to be approved, but the BMOrg is capricious.
The city is laid out shaped like the letter “C”, with concentric streets that are always named alphabetically from a word starting with “A” to “Whatever Letter We Need This Year” based on the theme and expected population, although the innermost and most prominent street with the “best” camps is always named “Esplanade”. My first year it was “A” through “H”, though by the end of the event they’d added two more (“I” and “J”) at the back to accommodate more people. There’s radial streets which stretch from the center at Esplanade to whatever the last street is that year spaced “30 minutes” apart. So you get addresses like “4:30 & A”, “8:00 & F”.
The theme camps are all placed within this grid according to where the BMOrg thinks you belong. The massive sound camps which play dubstep and other electronic music non-stop for the entire week (and I mean it) generally get placed at the ends of the C, 10:00 and 2:00, facing outwards so they aren’t bombarding “residential” areas and causing more sleep deprivation. Smaller musical camps or ones which play different music may end up closer to the interior.
During the few hours these guys were closed, the camp right next door was just getting started
That said, their standards often change with the wind. One year I was with a camp that had been there for over 10 burns and was on “A” every year. The following year they ended up getting pushed back to “C”. The next year they placed on “H”. This year they apparently didn’t even get approved for placement at all and the camp may not happen since nobody involved managed to secure a ticket, which is getting increasingly difficult each year are ever greater percentages of tickets are reserved for approved/placed theme camps rather than being open to the general public.
Not all camps are theme camps; not every camp is open and interactive. On one occasion my camp was just my wife and I, though we weren’t married yet during that burn. Definitely a small, non-interactive, closed camp. There’s also the hated “plug-n-play” camps, which are still non-interactive and closed, but are often quite large and provide everything a rich and famous burner could want on the playa, for a hefty fee, of course, sometimes exceeding $100,000. There’s controversy as to how to deal with these groups and some get explicitly barred from future burns, like a camp called Humano was.
One example of a plug-n-play ‘fortress camp’, so people like Paris Hilton and Elizabeth Holmes don’t have to risk being seen out of costume
As to the actual interactive theme camps themselves, they can generally be broken into two broad categories: daytime camps and nighttime camps. Similarly, most burners are either “daytime” burners or “nighttime” burners. During the day, the city has a slower pace and is dominated by smaller camps. There’s still some daytime party spots like Pink Mammoth and Distrikt that serve all the booze you can drink, but it’s not nearly as wild.
They were giving out pancakes
During the day, you’ll find a lot of camps offering things like yoga or aerials sessions, body painting and tattoos, bars, TED talks, bondage workshops, tasty food, hatmaking, film screenings, places to smoke hookah, theatre performances, woodworking pagodas, bouncy houses, and pretty much anything else you could expect to find in a major city (during the event, it’s Nevada’s third biggest city, complete with an airport). Except trash collection or recycling – that’s on you to take care of yourself.
There’s also some ‘services’ offered by burners, like postal delivery, RV servicing, and bicycle repair shops. That last one is key, as bicycles are the primary mode of transit in Black Rock City due to the fact that the city measures over 2mi in diameter and, other than art cars, driving is not allowed (unless you’re a cop or emergency responder of some sort). More on that next time. The highly alkaline dust on the playa tends to eat away at tires and bicycle chains, making frequent repairs a necessity. Burning Man has claimed 5 different bicycles from me. One bike didn’t even make halfway through the event, leaving me on foot for the rest of the burn except when I could find an unused community bike to borrow.
At night almost all of these services stop operating and most of the daytime camps close up, though some like the roller derby and mini golf stay open 24/7. Generally the city takes on a completely different aura. The people are completely different, too, as the nighttime burners tend to sleep during the day when it can get well over 120 degrees F. If you’re a nighttime burner, though, you need to pack for summer and winter temperatures, as it can be anywhere from 80 to 30 on a given night.
When the sun goes down, the city lights up and things get more intense. The Thunderdome opens up for fighters to beat the crap out of each other with foam weaponry. Foot traffic to the orgy dome picks up and lines start to form outside it. The daytime bars shut down and the nighttime bars open their doors. Things you never realized were there during the day suddenly appear, such as one camp that projected Donald Trump’s face onto the ground for passersby to jump on, only to have him move out of the way every time and laugh. Interactive mazes spring out of the ground like Theseus’ labyrinth for you to navigate in complete darkness. One camp created a series of old-school arcade games where you were the “character” on a pressure-sensitive platform of LEDs. The lights, lasers, and fire generally associated with Burning Man are suddenly everywhere you look.
No matter who you are, it will impress you. No pictures can adequately depict it and nobody can accurately describe it. Any two people could go and have completely different experiences; it’s entirely possible that you’ll come with someone whom you never cross paths with again until it’s time to leave, with both of you having never even entered the same camps.
The interactivity of the theme camps is only half the splendor though. The people who are only there to party tend to limit their experience to a few select major sound camps, but in my personal opinion the most impressive part of Burning Man is the art, many of which end their lives by burning to the ground. We’ll take a look at some of the art and art cars, next time.
I may have mentioned on this fair website that I hail from the magical lands of Romania in general, the capital thereof in particular. Bucharest can be a strange city. It is not always pleasant. It is loud, the air quality is quite poor, and the traffic is some of the worst in the world. The traffic contributes to both the bad air quality – lots of old second hand diesel cars for which the filters are not changed as needed – and the noise – Romanians do love to honk their car horns for no apparent reason. While some areas are green, overall it lacks in this department. The public transport is mediocre at best – unless you are lucky enough to be able to use the subway, and even then it is very crowded.
On the other hand, there was a bit of economic boom recently and there are still opportunities for the entrepreneurial types – as long as you don’t mind the prospect of occasionally having to grease a palm; the luxury clubbing scene can be great if you are into that sort of thing; the hipster clubbing scene is quite good if you are into that sort of thing. You can find plenty of craft coffee, good wine bars, decent beer bars, good if not spectacular restaurants, and the prices are overall decent. There are plenty of things in stores, but still not as many as in richer nations. It is generally quite safe, the education is good – as long as you do not rely on schools for it, and the healthcare is good – as long as you don’t get sick. The cinemas show – amazingly for Europe – not dubbed movies, there are sufficient number of theaters, shows, concerts. The gyms are plentiful as long as you are not looking for serious strength / power-lifting and you enjoy machine biceps curls and looking at hot young things in tight yoga pants.
For me it is home. Born and raised here. Probably the only place in Romania I will live in. This is generally true of most Romanians born in the few large cities which still have an economy. Especially true of Bucharest. I would find no reason to move unless I want to do so to a rural area – which I don’t – or abroad which I have not excluded yet. Most people in Romania move to Bucharest.
To get a bit of the old history in, Bucharest is, unofficially, the oldest city in the world. It was first built by the Ancient Dacians in 9560 BC. Their technology was so advanced the city was completely indistinguishable from a heavily wooded swamp. Camouflage, if you will… It is to keep the jealous foreigners away, you see. After the Ancient Dacians left earth to colonize Orion’s belt, their descendants lost some of the tech. As such, about 600 years ago, Bucharest was re-imagined as a bunch of hovels for shepherds. After that it continued in a haphazard fashion and became the capital of Wallachia.
It is not, geographically, a particularly good place for a capital. It is in the middle of what was an extensive forest and/or swamp and is now sort of a dry steppe. The Plains of Baragan. In the summer it can be scorching hot – 40 degrees of it – and the dust from the dry plains, plowed for agriculture, but insufficiently irrigated is raised by hot winds and dumped onto the city, doing wonders for air quality. The dust is compounded by all the building going on and, just for fun, we get an occasional dump of Sahara dust, migrating all the way from Africa. In the winter, it can get under -20 and the cold winds roar over the plains, unhindered by obstacles. It is, I believe, the EU capital with the highest difference between summer and winter temperatures. It was also not that easy to defend, which I assume is why the Ottomans liked it as a potential capital, compared to the previous ones which were in more mountainous terrain.
But a capital it is, since 1698 for Wallachia and the capital of Romania – smaller and greater – for as long as there was a Romania. Officially it has about 2 million people, unofficially probably quite a bit more, as people who come here do not formally change their residence in government records. It was the sort of capital that, throughout history, gave western travelers the chance to write the people back home about the quaint, backwards, chaotic little eastern town they are staying in. It was rather Balkan, if you will, and always a hundred years behind the west. The fact that the occasional earthquake leveled things, or, when that did not happen, a fire or plague did, was not…helpful. Romania was also a bit of a battleground for Austrians, Russian, Turks, Polish, Tatars and whoever felt like a little bit of ye olde invasion.
After Romania became Romania and the general industrial revolution started locally, things started to improve. Slowly but steadily, in local fashion. This was the time when the architecture and high culture brought about the name “Little Paris” (Micul Paris) of the east, to insult the French, I assume. It had some more advanced features, to be fair. It was one of the first cities in Europe to have horse drawn trams when in 1871, “Societatea Anonimă Română de Tramvaie”, with English and Belgian capital received permission to install the metal tracks. In 1893, electric trams came about. In 1861, it became one of the few cities in Europe to have gas powered street lighting, before Paris did. In 1882, the first electric street lights came about.
Things were not perfect and there were still plenty of slums – but things were constantly improving. Until communism came about and the improvements became clearing entire neighborhoods and building brutalist apartment blocks, close together, with few green spaces and little parking. They were poorly made, poorly insulated, with small cramped apartments which did not always have heat or hot water in winter. But they were needed to get the workers in, workers who were supposed to man the hastily built factories and give birth to the socialist dream. Mostly they became … what is the word… disillusioned, alienated… They were either from the old neighborhoods or from the country and apartment living was not always positively received. While country houses rarely had plumbing, they had some space, some green, some feeling of community which now was missing. The subway was built and the trams greatly expanded to cart the people from the apartments to the factories. And life was.
Fast forward again, communism fell and after the first 10 years of not much happening, a new construction boom took place. Newer – better, but expensive – apartment buildings were made, the suburbs expanded for those who wanted their own house rather than an apartment, the factories were torn down to make way for shiny office buildings. The old brutalist buildings where insulated and restored – which meant putting polystyrene on the outside and painting them.
Due to the difficulty of getting cars in communism, it became a status symbol and now everyone wants one. They are, to be fair, useful to have. But the communists did not design the city for cars. The streets are not large enough and parking is significantly below requirements. This led to cars being parked everywhere, further restricting traffic as at least one lane of a road is occupied by parked cars. People drive angry, park angry, honk their horns and swear, there are feuds so to speak over parking spots. But, in the end, people do have cars and the housing stock is improving. Some of the new ones are quite nice. And traffic and parking are, in the end, a huge problem in all large European capitals.
Overall, despite its problems, Bucharest is reasonably thriving right now, all things considered. I cannot say I have a bad lifestyle, although I would like better air quality and less noise. My commute to work is about 35 minutes each way, but 28-30 of that is walking, which I do not have a problem with and count it to daily exercise. I take the subway for two stops, and usually at hours when it is not crowded due to being a morning person. But even if crowded, 2 stops in 5 minutes is bearable. While this post may seem somewhat negative –and it somewhat is, there are many aggravating things about this place and people tend to focus on the negatives – it is not among the bad places of the world. It can be quite good, depending.
*109, according to Mercer ”Quality of living city ranking” 2019
But a capital it is, since 1698 for Wallachia and the capital of Romania – smaller and greater – for as long as there was a Romania. Officially it has about 2 million people, unofficially probably quite a bit more, as people who come here do not formally change their residence in government records. It was the sort of capital that, throughout history, gave western travelers the chance to write the people back home about the quaint, backwards, chaotic little eastern town they are staying in. It was rather Balkan, if you will, and always a hundred years behind the west. The fact that the occasional earthquake leveled things, or, when that did not happen, a fire or plague did, was not…helpful. Romania was also a bit of a battleground for Austrians, Russian, Turks, Polish, Tatars and whoever felt like a little bit of ye olde invasion.
