I left the Everglades behind me and rode up the coast road through Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach. Rode might not be the right word more like fought. It becomes more and more evident the more time you spend in American traffic that the use of the phone on driving has a very adverse affect. The lack of concentration and awareness of things that are going on around them is severely impaired. Using the phone while driving has not yet been banned in this country and it needs to be!! Texting has, although it’s still very commonly practiced. So after that little rant I didn’t see anything along that stretch of coastline that particularly inspired me to want to stay.
The Kennedy Space Centre
The rocket Garden
Starting to get a little larger
Titusville is on the Space Coast just alongside the spit that contains the Kennedy Space Centre and Cape Canaveral, one being the civil space centre and the other being the military one. For anyone my age and older the excitement of watching Apollo 11 going to the moon and (in my case in the UK) getting up in the early hours of the morning to watch Neil Armstrong take those first steps on the moon, all comes flooding back as you enter the visitors centre at the Kennedy Space Centre. The rockets arranged in a kind of garden seemed almost too small to have carried someone into space. The shuttle and the rockets that carry that particular vehicle up to the international space station, also smaller than I had imagined. It’s not until you get on the bus that takes you out towards the launch pads, observation platforms and ultimately the hanger that houses the Saturn V rockets that you get to see the giant that you remember slowly rising from the launch pad, smoke and flames billowing from the massive engines carrying the three men locked in a tiny capsule on top of this thing into space. It truly is huge and very, very, impressive. There is also a 3D Imax film showing a film about the space station and a launch simulator that was a lot more violent than I had expected. All in all a fantastic day, that allows boys of all ages to dream about being an astronaut.
The assembly building
The Lunar Module
The original launch control for the Lunar missions
One of the space suits used on Apollo 11
The next day I took a ride further up the coast to see Daytona Beach. If you were coming to this part of the world for a beach holiday I think this could be a very nice, easy going place to spend a week. I would also imagine that during the Daytona Bike Week things could be good fun around here. A little further up the coast I was told to go to a place called St Augustine. This little city is the oldest continuously occupied (European established) place on the North American continent, having been founded by the Spanish explorers in 1565. It is the headquarters of the US Coast Guard and again a very nice little place to visit. It’s quite a change to see buildings of this age in the USA when everything else is relatively modern.
The old Spanish Fort at St Augustine
Some of the original gates into the city
Small cobbled streets
And Spanish colonial buildings
The last day was spent looking at the Warbirds museum and the National Police museum. Loads of interesting planes and historic artifacts to wander around and absorb for a few hours. Including one of the police cars from Blade Runner and an electric chair!!
A B25 Bomber
A Huey helicopter from Vietnam
An F14 Tomcat
One of the police cars from Bladerunner
A Melbourne Police car. The third Melbourne I've seen now
The electric chair. Still scary!
I have now returned to Palm Harbor where I helped my mate Nigel and Lynne to move house and settle in. The rear tyre on the Wombat finally gave in the centre tread down to the canvas, not to bad as it’s now done 20,000km. The new tyre I had ordered on the internet was waiting when I got back and I took the rear wheel out and over to the BMW agent in Tampa to get it fitted and balanced. The odometer has also clocked over to 100,000km! So some fresh oil is going to be purchased this week and put in the engine along with a new filter.
Getting all the value I can out of this one!!
