Shug & I live about 10 minutes away from the facility to whom Jim Lovell was speaking when he said, "Houston, we have a problem." Our area is full of people who work, directly or indirectly, for the space industry. So when we learned that the space shuttle, Endeavour, would be making a stop here on her final trip to the west coast, we figured we would join the crowd of locals going to see it.
Well.
There wasn't a 'crowd' -- there were hoards, throngs, thousands & thousands of people that were not just 'local' but had driven hours, some even flew in! We left work a little early -- to get a jump on the crowd -- wink, wink. We spent about 2 to 2.5 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic arriving at & leaving the airfield. But we also spent about 45 minutes walking around & seeing the shuttle. It was worth every minute: seeing that amazing ship, being among all the people saying good-bye to it & good-bye to an era, an era meaningful to the country, but especially meaningful Houston.
It was AWESOME!