I don't have any space shuttle pictures in my computer but these guys are living dangerously and are incredibly brave as well!

COLUMBIA REMEMBERED

It's been 3 years now since that very sad day. The husband and I were heading east to Desert Hot Springs to visit with the West Coast Snowbird side of the family. As we were cresting the pass in Banning California I noticed a very strange jet trail. It was very curly and lengthy. Not at all like the slip fault way the wind normally breaks up those trails. I was mesmerized! It was so strange.

We arrive at the mobile home park that my cousins stay at every winter when Saskatchewan is too deep in snow and cold for their old bones to put up with anymore. After the usual catch-up talk fest we sit down to a game of Mexican train style Dominoes. We do this every year and look forward to it. When the game is over and the scorekeeper has won (the scorekeeper always wins) we don our swimming trunks and head for the 3 natural hot spring tubs that are the centerpiece of this mobile home park. After a pleasant soak in each of the pools (each one has a different temperature) it's time for dinner. We head off to the little restaurant at the park and partake of the daily specials offered at quite reasonable prices. Then we head back to my cousins for a cup of tea and some of the Date Squares that I brought for our visit. We sit out on the patio and wait for one of the resident road runners to show up for a bite to eat. My cousin is a hunter in the fall and almost always bags a deer. To my surprise the road runners really like to eat venison. I always thought of them as vegetarians!

Time to head home. Back over the hump of the Banning Pass where the San Andreas Fault line squeezes between the San Bernardino and the San Jacinto mountain ranges. We once saw a rocket take off from Vandenburg Air Force base while crossing this pass and we always hope for another treat like that whenever we travel through this area.

The next day is Sunday morning which brings the LA Times to the garage door. I read the news about Columbia. My heart bleeds! What I had thought was a beautiful phenomenon of wind and jet stream turned out to be disaster for seven brave souls and the space shuttle program. I know these seven were aware of the dangers and they were honoured to have been chosen for the journey. Still I am sad! I always wanted to take a ride into outer space. As a kid I used to have this weird fantasy that if I knew I was dying anyway that I wanted to be sent in a spaceship toward the sun. I planned to relay back information as I travelled to the sun for as long as I was able. Now that I have matured I know that instrumentation would do that task much better than I ever could. I am happy that the Space shuttle program has found it's legs again. Those seven astronauts would have wanted it that way! May they rest in peace.