Tesla | exploRVistas

This season is shaping up to be the winter of rockets and red cars for us. Living on the Space Coast of Florida, we’ve been fortunate to see several launches this winter, as SpaceX and United Launch Alliance have been very busy. As you probably have seen by now, the biggest rocket contained a red Tesla roadster. While that was beyond cool, it wasn’t the only red vehicle launch for us. More on that in a bit…

On January 29th, our friends Phyllis and Bernie came up from Fort Pierce for a visit.

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Diana and Phyllis worked together back in West Michigan. They checked out our park and then we went to Sebastian Beach Inn for a late lunch. It was great to see them again!

On January 31, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a communications satellite.

The mission required a full thrust to a high orbit, so the booster wasn’t able to return to the Cape. I was fortunate to get our Nikon focused enough to get this shot as the spacecraft flew by us. This is zoomed all the way, plus cropped to make it even bigger.

A mere 7 days later, SpaceX launched their Falcon Heavy rocket for the very first time. Luckily, this coincided with a visit by my sister Judy and her hubby Dale!

It was a perfect day for a show!

There were a lot of people watching up and down the beach.

And it’s liftoff, as viewed from Melbourne Beach! The Cape is just far enough away that it’s over the horizon.

This is my best photo of it. We were viewing it from the side, so it’s hard to see the side boosters. There is a Tesla in that nose cone! We did see the boosters separate, then fire side-by-side to begin their return to the Cape. A minute or so later, they relit and landed in almost perfect unison.

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My cousin Mary was much closer up at Cocoa Beach and posted this photo on Facebook of the boosters coming in. Beyond cool!

After the launch, the four of us went to dinner at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort.

What a fun day!

So what else have we been doing? Well, between substitute teaching assignments, Diana and I decided to go for a drive in Edsel the Escape yesterday up to Jacksonville.

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Before Edsel knew what happened, his license plate was off and Diana was shaking hands with William the car salesman. Meet Edsel 2 on the left, our new 2018 Ford Escape! Now all we need to do is to make sure Elon Musk doesn’t launch it into space. 🙂

We’ve also been planning our summer trip, which we will talk about in a future post. It’s also maintenance season for our rig and vehicles….uhhhh, well one vehicle. We sort of took care of any maintenance that needed to be done on the Escape!

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The biggest job of all is waxing the fifth wheel. It takes me a few weeks to complete the job, as I only tackle a section each morning. That strategy to be much easier on my body than trying to knock it out in a couple of days. And that leaves the afternoons free for the beach and the next rocket launch!

It is that time of year when many of us celebrate the holidays with our loved ones! Here in the United States, the season focuses mostly on Christmas…but let’s not forget that many of us have other traditions. On my rounds through the neighborhoods delivering packages for UPS, I’ve also noticed several Happy Hanukkah signs. Still others celebrate Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year, St. Lucia Day, and Omisoka this time of year.

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Most of them involve gifts! The streets are filled with not only our UPS golf carts, but also FedEx and USPS trucks. I was even surprised to see a plain white cargo van pull up to a house filled to the roof with Amazon boxes! I found out later that Amazon is delivering some (but not all) of their packages themselves. With that said, here’s a quick update on the delivery gig: Since our last post, the routes have pretty much been covered with employees who chose to stick with the job. That’s a good thing, as it meant I was able to work just at my pod and help out on the pod next to mine. The amount of packages settled down until the Wednesday before Christmas, when things ramped up. This last Friday was my busiest day, with 149 stops and 197 packages delivered. That happened in 7 hours and 22 minutes (including sorting and loading) for an average of one package every two-and-a-half minutes! The step count on my Fitbit came in at a little over 15,000 steps that day. Several of those stops involved adult signatures, as wine is a popular thing to ship this time of year. The very next day…Saturday…the volume dropped way off.

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I covered BOTH pods in one load. But while it doesn’t seem like much, it represents 38 very happy households who were able to get their last minute gifts in time for their celebrations. Notice that someone even shipped Graeter’s ice cream from Ohio! It was rock-solid, so it must work to do that. I will be providing a wrap-up of the job, once it ends in mid-January…so be sure to stay tuned.

Lots of other things have been happening in our area! On December 9th, we got together for dinner with our friends Bob and Pat from Michigan Traveler.

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They were staying at Wickham Park for a few weeks, and are ultimately hoping to head for their spot in the Keys…which is still in recovery mode from Hurricane Irma. It was great to see them again!

We also had an unexpected visit from our friends Dave and Lois from Wild Cherry. Unfortunately, their visit was rushed, as they were travelling with their dog Darby. Within two minutes of them arriving, the park owner rolled up on his golf cart to remind us of the ‘no pet’ rule in the park. It’s the only rule in our annual Letter of Intent that is in bold type, so he’s adamant about it. As animal lovers, it’s not our favorite thing…but the park works well for us otherwise. As we said, we would love for people to stop by and visit; just remember that the puppies and kitties have to stay home. 😦

This past week has also seen many of the park residents head back north for the holidays. It’s a little quiet around here. They will all be back next week, plus many more. The park should be hopping soon!

Diana and I saw another SpaceX launch. She was at our park and I was loading up my golf cart at the time.

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My pod is a little over 10 miles from the launch pad. The exhaust flames were clearly visible going up, followed by the low rumble of the rocket several seconds later. The entire scene was played back in reverse a couple minutes later, as the first stage descended back to the Cape and landed upright on an adjacent landing pad. Absolutely amazing to be able to see that. SpaceX is hoping to launch their Falcon Heavy for the first time in January, which is three of these rockets strapped together. The payload will be Elon Musk’s personal red Tesla, which will hopefully end up in the same orbit around the sun as Mars. A red roadster and a red planet. We are hoping to get tickets for that launch, so we will be sure to let you know how that goes!

And Christmas in Florida wouldn’t be complete without Surfing Santas!

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Once again, Cocoa Beach was packed with elves on surfboards on Christmas Eve!

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Thousands of people were there to have a good time, listen to various bands and watch the hula dancers. Even though the ocean was flat, an occasional wave would come in to provide some surfing entertainment.

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With that, Diana and I wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year, Boxing Day, Festivus, or whatever you may celebrate. Stay safe and enjoy!