Awestruck: viewing my VERY First Rocket Launch with My Own Eyes at DisneyWorld

This was a truly earth shattering moment for me. I was walking around Epcot, near the China pavilion, when suddenly I saw something metallic glint in the sun, and a trail of something white behind it, lifting straight up towards the sky… it took me about a second to realize what it must be.

I was amazed, and dumb struck (practically immobile) … I could not speak. Seriously… I started pointing up at the sky, could NOT get a word out of my mouth and was making these weird moaning noises instead (people who saw me initially thought I was mad). When no one paid attention I started poking men who were walking by (Fathers with kids) and pointing at the sky.

One of them finally said, “What, what am I supposed to be looking …. OH SHIT! It’s a ROCKET!” And this finally redirected the attention of the other people who were staring at me like I was a mad woman.

Still I could barely move and wasn’t doing very well with the talking either … I’m not over stating this… I was completely dumb struck … literally unable to speak.

This man started pointing it out to his kids, loudly, and then other folks all stopped to see what we were pointing at, exclaiming things like, “THIS has made this trip worth it (from bored dads)!” and “I’ve never seen this before!” “Amazing!” “Oh my G-D!!!” “Honey LOOK!” “Wow, that must be from Cape Canaveral!” etc. … and we, as a growing crowd of techno geeks, watched it climb and climb till it disappeared

Only after the shock and awe subsided and my voice and wits returned to me — after we had all congratulated ourselves, all bonding in the enormity of the moment in a communion of “THAT WAS SO FUCKING COOL!!!!”…  did I finally remember to pull out my camera… hence the lousy photo of the smoke as it was already beginning to be pushed around by the winds  — it had been a perfectly straight line.

….. and I for one was completely overcome by my emotions for at least the next half hour.

One interesting thing was, I seemed to be the only woman who gave a shit. All the guys who passed (who weren’t locals and hence accustomed to the site) stopped and stared, but I noticed that women seemed more than annoyed by their husbands being distracted from “being at Disney” than interested in what was happening in the sky above. That and I noted not one of the moms was even like, “Hey! Teaching moment for my kids, let’s talk science” … nope, that seemed to be left to the men.