Oh, my goodness. Let's talk about space, the final frontier. Well, hello. How are you?
This is the Daily Grateful. I'm Michael, and I'm here to talk to you today because that's what I do. I come in here and I sit in front of Mr. Microphone and there is a cat here on the front of my microphone.
Let me get it off there. There's another one. Damn it. Darn it, I need tape anyway.
I have to. Look at me doing this. Pulling the tape off the tape gun, cutting it off. Okay, and now running it across my rode podmic us.
And you're hearing all of this hooked up to the road procaster duo whilst I talk about space and my history with space. And don't we all have history with space? Because guess what happened today? You know what happened today?
Artemis 2 loss launched over at the Cape. Now, how exciting is that? When it launched, I went out in my backyard because, you know, we can sometimes see these things from Clearwaters, the other side of the state. And I just.
I don't know, I just had this feeling in my gut. And I went over there and there's clouds. I could not see it. Up at the top of the hill from where I live, they could see it because I could hear a bunch of people cheering.
And I said, isn't that cool as hell? You know, wow. And then I went in and I watched television. And on the television.
I'll get to that in a little bit because that brought back so many memories for me when I turned on the tv. Oh, goodness gracious. Sakes alive. I'm so.
I'm so glad I cleaned up my microphone, even though, you know. Anyway, it was so exciting to see this on TV today and to see where the cameras were. Did you watch tv? Did you see that giant countdown clock?
Okay, more on that in a few minutes because for another launch that we'll talk about in a little bit. I was there right by that clock, right down a little ways from that clock. But my early memories of space. Let's go to February 20, 1962, the Friendship 7.
John Glenn was the first man to actually orbit the Earth. Okay. To go all the way around the Earth to re orbits. 1, 2, 3, boom.
Goes to dynamite. John Glenn became a hero. The first person to do that. How freaking cool was that?
I lived in Michigan at the time, but I remember being glued to the television watching that launch and my whole family watching our black and white television and just holding on for dear life watching the Friendship 7 go up into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida and him orbiting twice and then reentering. Oh my gosh, we were so nervous when he reentered because, you know, in those days, I've got a cell phone in the other room that has a computer that is in my cell phone that is like a gazillion times more powerful than anything John Glenn had on the Friendship 7. I mean, it was a wish in a prayer. He went up there, he orbited the Earth three times, came back into space, landed in the ocean, had to get, you know, people in helicopters jumping down and swimming over and getting them, putting them in a row.
How freaking cool was that? Now let's fast forward a little bit to John Glenn's second trip into space, because that one's personal to me. All right? That one is real personal to me.
Number one. I remember the excitement of him going up on the Friendship 7. But on this time on October 29, 1998, you see that clock on television today, that countdown clock right across from there. You saw all the press was actually five miles away from the Artemis 2.
Five miles. Five miles. But you could see it just as clear as day because I was on that causeway when John Glenn went up into space. I was right there with all of the IPs, you know, that were there.
Leonardo DiCaprio and all those other people were sitting there and then I was there. Why was I there? Because I was in radio. I was actually covering the launch for a radio station over there in Melbourne that was owned by radio friend of mine and I, he and Paul Gonzalez were at the station.
All right? And Paul Gonzalez was a big time talk show host in those days and Ed Shiflett owned the station and I was doing the live coverage from there. And here's what's special about that. I took my friends Ralph and Jan to go with me and, and I took my 10 year old daughter Cassandra, and we went over there and we had to get all these clearances and all these passes and all this stuff to get up to that causeway where we parked their van.
And Ralph and Jan had like they were campers, I'm telling they were campers. And they set up a little kitchen there and they were, they were making. And I was doing lunch reports back to the, back to the studio from there using a cell phone. And it was like so funny.
I was sitting there and looking across. Five miles away was the space shuttle Discovery. It looked like a 10 story building from where I was at. There was this giant 10 story building across and ended up in the Very top of that was John Glenn.
He was in there. He was going up into the space shuttle to go up there. He was 77 years old. The oldest person ever to reach orbit.
Can you imagine that? Okay, the oldest person ever to reach orbit. And they went up there. And anyway, I'm sitting there watching, and I'm having to do reports.
And we're sitting there. Ralph and Chan are making lunch. They've got a grill out and everything. And I get called to do a launch report.
Okay, I get. Shiflet and Gonzalez are in the studio at the radio station. And they're saying, here's Michael with a laundry board. And I'm saying, yeah, it's really exciting over here.
I said, my buddy Ralph and Chan, they're cooking. They're making something called Spam. I don't understand that. But also burgers.
And you wouldn't believe. They're melting the cheese. Everything's. Michael, what are you talking about?
You wanted a lunch report, right? I'm telling you all about our lunch. You wouldn't believe this. Everybody around here, by the way, there was all these people around there that were hearing this report on the radio.
And they're looking at me doing this, and they are all rolling in the grass, laughing, and, Michael, Michael, we don't want a lunch report. We don't care what you eat. So I get what I'm eating. No money.
Lunch report. I said, hey, just a minute. Let me look over there. Yeah, it's still there.
It isn't gonna be there for another hour. It's still there. Now back to lunch. And it was hysterical.
It was absolutely hysterical. But I'm gonna tell you something. My daughter was 10 years old at the time, and we're out there. There's people on that causeway that, you know, you had to know somebody to get on that causeway.
That causeway was closed. There were helicopters going around making sure that nobody was where they were not supposed to be. Because out from the Cape was another little place out there. Believe it or not, it was a nude beach.
And there was somebody out there hiding in the bushes. Because from there they were. I was. We were five miles away.
They were like a mile and a half away from there. And we saw helicopters going over, a couple helicopters going over there. And I don't know, I found out later they made the decision not to hold up the launch and just go. And helicopters kept coming and they left.
And then it came time for that thing to take off. Now, I was watching on television today when the Artemis 2 launched. And, oh, My God, I was so excited. First of all, I run out into my backyard to look up to see if I can see the thing taking off into the sky, which I couldn't because of clouds.
But other people I've talked to in my old neighborhood saw it. Okay, so you can see it from here. You could see it in the sky, going through the sky. But I was watching on television, I was listening to the guy describe it and what he was describing.
And the Artemis was that rocket is bigger than the rockets that took the space shuttle up. Much bigger, much more powerful. And I will tell you that when that space shuttle, it had John Glenn sitting up in it. 77 year old John Glenn sitting in there, going up into the sky.
We'd been watching this 10 story building sitting there like all damn day. And then all of a sudden you saw the smoke come out of the bot of it and you saw fire coming out of the bottom of it. And that thing slowly just seemed very slowly lifting up and then all of a sudden just breaking loose into the sky. We didn't hear anything, which I thought was like really odd.
And then I'm listening, you know, this is all coming back from what I heard today from the guy who was in the same location that I was reporting on this launch. Okay, for today, same location. He said for about a minute or two we didn't hear anything. And then all of a sudden the vibration, the noise, but more importantly, the vibration went through our entire bodies.
And I cannot tell you, I cannot for the life of me describe what that was like. I remember looking over at my daughter Cassandra, who was standing by the, by the minivan while I was reporting on this. And I could see her body, and I could see Ralph and Chan's body, the griddle they had there shaking. Because what happened about a minute or two minutes after that thing launched is the noise and the vibration, more importantly in the noise.
But a lot of noise and the vibration came through. And every, every square micro inch of my body felt that vibration. I'm looking at my daughter, every square inch of her body felt that vibration. I was looking at her hair and her hair was shaking from that vibration of that what looked like a 10 story building that was there and was now like rising up into the heavens, going away.
And the same thing was reported today by the reporters that were in that same spot that we were at. And I remember describing that on the air as that thing went up into the sky and just kept going. And I remember that, I said, that is so damn powerful. I Cannot believe.
And I used to go to church with a guy who worked for Honeywell who worked on part of the propulsion system for the space shuttle. And what they had to do. You remember on the space shuttle, that big black thing that was actually a fuel tank, and they had to figure out how to get that fuel into those two side rockets at such a force. And so quickly.
Nothing like that had ever been done before. And they had to engineer that to work. And we know what happened later with the Challenger, with that whole situation, but on this particular day, it worked like a charm. And that thing went up into the air.
We felt the vibration. I'm watching on TV today, the Artemis 2 launched today. And everybody that was on that causeway, five miles away from where it was, were feeling it. They weren't experiencing it.
Well, they were experiencing it, but they were feeling it. Every cell in their body could feel that. Can you imagine what it was like. Can you only imagine what it was like for the people who were on that rocket today?
Can I only imagine what it was like for the astronauts that were with John Glenn? Can I only imagine what John Glenn felt in 1962 when he went up there? I mean, whoa, holy cow, you know, Holy freaking cow. And.
And, you know, he was just on a fireball going up in space. And that's what it was when I saw that in the shuttle go up, and that was just incredible. And now I want to talk a little bit, if I can, about the first moon landing, because that's part of my history, too. The first moon landing happened on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, walked on the moon.
Michael Collins orbited the moon while they were. While the other two landed on the moon. I had a girlfriend named Diane White at the time, and I was over at Diane White's house visiting. And it was time for me to go home.
And her. One of her best friends, Pam. Pam Hare, was there, and her mother was picking her up, and her mother was going to give me a ride home. And I was gonna be home in time to see, you know, the first moon landing.
I was gonna be home to watch that on television. But no, no, no, no, no, we did not go home. We went to a bar on U.S. 19 called Big John's Bar just before.
On U.S. 19, just before sunset Point Road. And we went in there, and mom is sitting at the bar, and Pam and I are sitting at a table. We're drinking sodas.
Mom's getting tired, you know, drunk, along with all of her friends, cigarette smoke, every rag. But they had black and white televisions up there above the bar. And there Pam and I sat there at Big John's Bar. Pam has since passed away, but in 2010.
I had not seen her since high school. But in 2010, I ran into her at our 40th high school reunion. And we talked about that night in that day and that evening, of what that experience was. I met her husband, who was just most wonderful guy, and he got excited as Pam and I talked of our excitement.
Watching Neil Armstrong, watching that ship land on the moon, watching that thing land on the moon. Okay. Watching them orbit, watching it land on the moon, and watching Neil Armstrong go down that ladder. And we're at Big John's Tavern on U.S.
19 and on a black and white television with poor reception. And the. It was just incredible. A memory that Pam and I shared until she passed on.
It is a memory that has stuck with me all of these years, and it was incredible. You know, I remember telling Doc, doc is my friend. He's the president of the Campa Bay Technology Center. And several months ago, we were having a discussion, and I said, I don't think we should be sending people into space.
We're not good at it. A lot of people have died going into space. And they have. They have.
But you know what? Watching that launch today totally changed my mind. Because people are adventurers. We're explorers.
It's part of what's deep inside of us. I'm so grateful for that. You know what else I remember? Walking into my backyard, looking up at the sky, at the moon, when there were astronauts standing up on the moon and saying to my late sister, isn't that amazing?
Isn't that freaking amazing? All right, we'll see you next time.