The next day, February 15^th, with winds of 20 – 30 mph, we powered our way off the Vero Beach Yacht Club dock and headed over to Melbourne, and Eau Gallie YachtClub, another FCYC club. We had left the Treasure Coast and were now cruising the Space Coast. We were so excited because some dear friends from our days back in the 80’s in Dallas, were driving up from Winter Park (Orlando) to meet us. Although we had sporadically kept in touch, we had not seen Anne and Egerton in person in nearly thirty years, but they hold a special place in our hearts as they are responsible for setting us up on a blind date forty years ago.

In the mid-80s, Anne had joined the law firm in Dallas where I was working as an associate attorney. Her husband, Egerton, was a doctor who was a fellow in Cardiology at Parkland Hospital. Anne and I were good friends with another female associate at the firm, Marian. Egerton announced to all of us one evening: “You girls need husbands. I am going to find you husbands.” Yeah, right, we thought. But sure enough, Egerton introduced Marian to Ron, an internal medicine resident at Parkland, and three weeks later, they were engaged (yes, three weeks – but happy to report that they are happily married to this day). Egerton set me up on a blind date with George, a surgical resident at Parkland. We hit it off, and about a month after we had first met, he asked me to go with him to the big party after his medical school graduation. I thought it odd that he invited me to the party but not the graduation ceremony, but oh well, I said, yes (I found out much later that he didn’t want me to be subjected to his mother at the ceremony without someone around to protect me – seriously).

Two weeks went by and I didn’t hear another word from Dr. George, not about the party, not about his graduation – nothing. I was a bit irritated, so that Saturday morning when one of the senior partners at the firm asked me to go along that day and evening to take a group of summer law clerks sailing on his boat about two hours north of Dallas, I agreed to go, even though I knew that we likely would not return until close to midnight. Well, we got up to the lake, but a horrible storm came through, so the entire crew returned to Dallas early and took the food from the sailboat to have dinner at the partner’s house. Anne was among the crew and since we were back in town and Egerton had finished work, he joined the group for dinner. He was upset to see me there and asked why I wasn’t at the graduation party with George as planned. When I explained that George had been incommunicado and I wasn’t going to wait around for anyone, Egerton started to plead George’s case. He is a really good guy, he said; something terrible must have happened, otherwise he would have called, he said, at least check your answering machine to see if he has called (this was back in the day before cell phones, voicemail, and we all had recorder answering machines). Egerton wouldn’t give it up, so I finally relented and called my house, where my cousin from out of town was staying while she was in Dallas for a few days doing some modeling at the Dallas Fashion Mart.

When she answered, she told me that some guy name George had called about a dozen times, and that in the last message he said that he would see me at ten o’clock, he hoped. By now, everyone at dinner, especially Anne and Egerton, were urging me to give George a break and be at my house when George came to pick me up for the party.  I begrudgingly deferred to their collective judgment and went home to get ready. Having no information about the party, I cleaned up and put on a fresh pair of blue jeans (I was imagining the beer bash after my law school graduation). Ten o’clock came and went – no George, no telephone call. To say that I was not pleased would have been an understatement. Sometime after 10:30 the phone finally rang, and it wasn’t even George, it was his roommate, John, who rushed to tell me just what an awful day George had had: that graduation had been a disaster; it had rained and as the class president George had to scramble with administration to make alternative arrangements and get the word out to all the graduates and their families. He was apparently still overwhelmed, so he wanted to send John to pick me up.  I started complaining that George hadn’t bothered to tell me anything about the party, that I hadn’t known when it was supposed to start, nor anything else about it. Exasperated I said, “I don’t even know what I am supposed to wear!” At that point, John got really quiet, and after an extended silence finally said, “He’s wearing a tux.”

I slammed down the phone and turned to my cousin and told her, He’s wearing a tux – I am NOT going! She responded by rolling over the hanging rack of formal dresses that she had been modeling at the Fashion Mart. She pulled dresses over my head one after another, and just before John rang the doorbell, we found one that fit. And that is why George and I are married today and have three beautiful children. All thanks to Anne and Egerton, and a cousin with a supply of fancy dresses. That, and the fact that after that evening I was hopelessly infatuated with George (and I still am). Anne and Egerton had their first child the day before George and I were married, and one of my most vivid memories was seeing Egerton, moments before I walked down the aisle, dart into the church with his hair sticking straight up having come directly from the hospital. Like I said, Anne and Egerton hold a special place in our hearts, and we feel like we owe them in no small measure for the part they played in our happy marriage.

We had a wonderful reunion with them. They drove over from the Orlando area and met us on the boat for cocktails, then they took us to dinner at Dijons, one of their favorite restaurants in Melbourne. It was a wonderful evening, and we have promised to not let so much time pass before we meet in person again.

With winds predicted to markedly increase over the following day, we left Melbourne very early the morning of February 16^th headed for Titusville along the Space Coast. Along the way, we noticed a curious phenomenon where seagulls and pelicans flying behind Assisted Living sort of drafted on the air as it pushed around the boat, with only the occasional flap of a wing required. We also must have been churning up some food for the birds, because they continually dove down and picked things out of the water. They followed behind us for hours.

At Titusville City Marina we backed into a very tight slip with hardly room for the bumpers, which we stuffed between the boat and dock pilings only after we had arrived. Up until this point,  we’d had good luck with dock hands, but the guy at Titusville was horrible, shouting directions that directly contradicted what George was telling Chris to do over the headsets, and gesticulating wildly without a clear target saying, “Get a line on ‘that’ piling”… “no ‘THAT’ piling.”  After we were secured in the slip, Chris told the dock hand she had a few “tips” for him as well – mainly if you are going to shout about pilings, you might try using the word “port” or “starboard” rather than “that” piling; and never, no matter how much you think you know, contradict the captain bringing the boat into the slip. She explained that we had backed this boat into slips well over a hundred times and we had never had a more chaotic docking than the one he had just presumed to “direct.” (I am getting mad all over again just writing about it).

That afternoon we biked all over town to explore Titusville. Because it was a Monday, many things were closed, but we enjoyed the waterfront paths and spent time absorbing information in four parks interspersed throughout Titusville dedicated to the four NASA programs: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle. We found one open restaurant at the base of the bridge crossing the ICW, Pier 220, and enjoyed a casual dinner overlooking the water. The bike ride home was freezing – we were failing miserably at the Looper goal of “chasing 80″ (as in 80 degrees).

In the morning we took an Uber to the Kennedy SpaceCenter. Wow! Forget Disney World – when my grandchildren get old enough, I am taking them to the Kennedy Space Center. Every exhibit was fun and informative. We started with a bus tour of the complex that took us to an interactive exhibit demonstrating the newest rocket launch technology, with a tall platform affording views of current and former launch areas, including the upcoming NASA Artemis. In the distance we could see the launch pads for the SpaceX Falcon rockets and the former gantry structures for Atlantis, Delta, Apollo, Gemini and Mercury. Next up was the Apollo/Saturn V Center with a deconstructed Saturn V rocket, multiple exhibits, and a multi-media presentation of the lunar landings presented in the actual control room used for those missions. We checked out a moving memorial for one of the early Apollo disasters (many of my friends growing up attended Grissom Elementary, and I am wondering if back then they were made aware of just what a heroic bad a$$ Gus Grisson was). After lunch at the “Moon Rock Café,” we explored the exhibits about the Space Shuttle Atlantis, with another excellent multimedia presentation. Then on to the iMax theater for two films, one about Deep Space and another about Space as the New Frontier. The Hubble Telescope is providing some freaky data and imagery that has radically changed our understanding of the universe. We were blown away.  We need to get our kids in Bay County schools on a field trip to the Kennedy Space Center. I can’t imagine there would be a more effective way to activate their interest in the critical subjects of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

We had timed our visit to Titusville in the hopes it would coincide with a rocket launch. We learned before we arrived that the manned Artemis launch had been delayed, but a SpaceX Falcon rocket launch was still in the works for Wednesday night. When we learned of a delay in the SpaceX launch, we extended our stay at the marina for another night because we really wanted to experience viewing (and feeling) a rocket launch in person. We spent Wednesday on boat and business chores and watched with interest as divers cleaning boat bottoms in the marina worked in pairs – one in the water scrubbing the hull, and a second on the dock keeping an eye out for alligators (those guys deserve hazard pay). We also listened to an AGLCA podcast about a Loop side trip down the St. Johns River south of Jacksonville (all the way to Sanford in Central Florida) and decided to incorporate that into our plans.