Post by Bluesky78987 on Oct 13, 2012 18:24:20 GMT -5
So BillG22 beat me to it with his Endeavour space shuttle photo, but here's my writeup anyway!
Last night my friend Mark and I went down to beautiful downtown Inglewood, with about 20,000 of our closest friends, to watch the space shuttle continue it's crawl across LA to it's final home at the California Science Center. We are so lucky to have a shuttle to call our own!
We were able to park about 2 blocks away from the route, which was great! Here is the atmosphere: well lit, energetic, noisy, busy. Helicopters overhead. Southern California Edison crews were dismantling light poles, taking down and rearranging wires; big cranes were lifting droopy wires so the shuttle could fit underneath, etc. They were generally keeping people behind the sidewalks, so people were standing in doorways, on lawns and planters, etc. In some places people were allowed on sidewalks. This was all to keep us out of the way of the many crews and policeman buzzing back and forth in squad cars, golf carts and bicycles. Not sure they were really DOING anything, but they were sure busy.
We walked down to Manchester Boulevard, and were just kind of enjoying the spectacle and the crowd before the shuttle arrived. You could see the street lights they had taken down to let the shuttle pass:
And various entrepreneurs were selling their wares. Nothing says "I saw the Space Shuttle" like a blue L.E.D.-filled headband or sword.
:
I got a T-shirt:
As we walked along the closed street looking for a good place to sit and wait, I happened to look waaaaay down the street and said "OMFG! Looklooklooklook it's right there!"
The shuttle was waiting just on the other side of the 405, and we were seeing it, like some kind of mythical beast, all lit up, from about half a mile away, down the street. It was very eerie, with it all lit up like that in the night, just waiting down there, like it was poised to take off down a runway or something. Very exciting!
The shuttle was parked on the west side of the freeway, waiting to cross. The late night drivers were getting a treat no doubt! Someone tweeted "I'm stuck in a big traffic jam, but there's a space ship by the side of the road, so I'll take it!" Here's the view across the freeway from east to west:
As we got closer down the street, someone told us where to go to get really close to it, and get photos with the famous LA icon, giant donut sign of Randy's Donuts.
It kind of looks like Endeavour is going through a donut drive-thru!
Incidently, Randy's was considerate/inconsiderate enough to be closed, but to continue to bake donuts and release DonutSmell into the air while we all stood there and salivated! Gonna need to get some donuts soon. Maybe I'll go to Randy's! They sure got a lot of free publicity out of this, since the shuttle (and about 15 tv cameras) was parked in front of the store for about 6 hours.
There were really a LOT of people there.
Everybody was happy though, and even though we smooshed ourselves in like sardines trying to get as close as possible for pics, everybody had remembered to take a shower, so it was all good! People were having fun kidding around and sharing a general love of all things space shuttle-ish. Pretty big fan club it has! (Twitter was going crazy on #endeavour. I think half of LA went to see it at some point.)
Lots of kids there, including some young photographers:
After standing around like that for awhile, they brought in the Toyota Tundra they were using to shoot the soon-to-be-famous TV commercial with Luke Wilson.
The crowd got all excited any time something happened, since the shuttle was just sitting there doing nothing for a really long time. So when the Tundra (red lettering on silver truck) showed up, it was like "Gentlemen, start your cameras!!"
Some photographers had very creative techniques for shooting over the heads of everybody else:
The shuttle had to cross the freeway on the Manchester Bouelvard overpass. When it was about time, we went to the Florence Avenue overpass, the next one to the north. It is actually quite close, and provided a great view. It was really wierd when the flow of cars on the freeway started getting thinner and thinner and then suddenly stopped. They had closed off the freeway in both directions.
Getting ready to cross:
Crossing:
Here's the video:
After it crossed the freeway, we sprinted back around to Manchester to watch it drive by. But, we had forgotten that Endeavour had to stop for awhile on the other side to change shoes. The robot powered trucks it was moving on weren't street legal for the overpass (or something), that's why the Tundra had to tow it. So, Endeavour had to switch back to the robot cars after crossing the freeway.
So once we got all sweaty sprinting around to get in front of Endeavour, we then got hypothermia (it was only 62, that's cold) sitting still waiting for it to tie it's shoelaces and get a move on. According to sources, the shoe-swap was supposed to take about an hour. Well, it ended up taking 4 hours. Nobody ever explained to the crowd what took so long, but's all good. It was worth the wait a hundred times over.
Unfortunately for them, but good for us, about 18,000 of our 20,000 new closest friends left during those 4 hours. Only the die-hard fans remained. By the time the shuttle was ready to roll again, it was 3:30 am. So we were able to move to a much better sidewalk spot than we had originally scoped out.
Well, that and the fact that our original sidewalk location, a nice grassy hill next to the Lotus 9 Motel, suddenly became a lot less appealing when, with no warning whatsoever, the sprinklers came on. A lot of shrieking and jumping about ensued! We didn't get toooo wet though. And it caused us to start up conversations with our new neighbors after we all rearranged ourselves on the Lotus 9 Motel's nice dry driveway. In my case, a lively Brit shooting a really nice camera. He was taking time-lapse photos of the crowd (I guess he was going to take time lapse photos of the shuttle going by - neat).
Everybody waiting around, and waiting around and waiting around. Lots of support vehicles clustered around Endeavour:
Then, FINALLY, it started rolling. Everybody started cheering. We were in a spot with a GREAT view, and had a front row seat as it went by.
I might have been heard screaming "Here it comes! Here it comes! Looklooklooklooklook!!!!" I think at one point I may have been jumping up and down too. Everybody was.
It came close. And I mean CLOSE. As it went by us, the body of the shuttle was about 20 feet away, and the wingtips were about 5 feet over our heads, about 5 feet away.
As it moved on past us, we took some pictures of the jet engines, which were really impressive in person, but hard to photograph at night:
Then we started following it down the sidewalk, walking under the wingtip. Nobody (security guards or fans) seemed to notice or care -- a few of us were doing it. Everybody was hypnotized by how cool the whole event was, and busy taking pictures!
At one point as we followed and watched, the wingtip went within a foot of one of the buildings. Like they keep saying on TV, it was a tight fit! The drivers did a great job though, and it didn't have to stop and maneuver at all.
After a while of this we decided to get in front of it again so we ducked back one street and sprinted up ahead of it (you have to go pretty fast to pass a 2mph shuttle!) I'm not a runner, but we made it. While we were running down an alley, some other completely random guy who was also running down the alley yelled out to me "This is SO COOL!" Indeed. So many people sharing in the coolness too. Incredible rush.
When we came back to the street, there were a bunch of people who were shuttle 'virgins', as it hadn't passed them yet, and they were kind of jockeying for position, threading their way down the crowded sidewalk. At one point I stopped in the walkway for a quick photo (basically blocking it for a second), which was totally what everybody else was doing too, when this guy came up and we got to witness a treat of a reaction from him. I was videoing the shuttle, when the guy starts to get annoyed that I was blocking traffic. What he says next is priceless! So make sure your sound is up and listen till the end of the video. (Warning: Language advisory, but in a good way.) We were all laughing afterwards!
What an awesome evening it was! One of the best, and one I will certainly never forget.
(PS - as I was typing this, I see out my window that they must be doing the public "show" at the Forum right now, or wherever they decided to have it, because four white T-6 Texan warbirds are buzzing around in formation in that general vicinity. What do you want to bet there were 6, and they did the Missing Man Salute for Challenger and Columbia? Sniff. That Missing Man Salute always makes me cry.)
Last night my friend Mark and I went down to beautiful downtown Inglewood, with about 20,000 of our closest friends, to watch the space shuttle continue it's crawl across LA to it's final home at the California Science Center. We are so lucky to have a shuttle to call our own!
We were able to park about 2 blocks away from the route, which was great! Here is the atmosphere: well lit, energetic, noisy, busy. Helicopters overhead. Southern California Edison crews were dismantling light poles, taking down and rearranging wires; big cranes were lifting droopy wires so the shuttle could fit underneath, etc. They were generally keeping people behind the sidewalks, so people were standing in doorways, on lawns and planters, etc. In some places people were allowed on sidewalks. This was all to keep us out of the way of the many crews and policeman buzzing back and forth in squad cars, golf carts and bicycles. Not sure they were really DOING anything, but they were sure busy.
We walked down to Manchester Boulevard, and were just kind of enjoying the spectacle and the crowd before the shuttle arrived. You could see the street lights they had taken down to let the shuttle pass:
And various entrepreneurs were selling their wares. Nothing says "I saw the Space Shuttle" like a blue L.E.D.-filled headband or sword.
:I got a T-shirt:
As we walked along the closed street looking for a good place to sit and wait, I happened to look waaaaay down the street and said "OMFG! Looklooklooklook it's right there!"
The shuttle was waiting just on the other side of the 405, and we were seeing it, like some kind of mythical beast, all lit up, from about half a mile away, down the street. It was very eerie, with it all lit up like that in the night, just waiting down there, like it was poised to take off down a runway or something. Very exciting!
The shuttle was parked on the west side of the freeway, waiting to cross. The late night drivers were getting a treat no doubt! Someone tweeted "I'm stuck in a big traffic jam, but there's a space ship by the side of the road, so I'll take it!" Here's the view across the freeway from east to west:
As we got closer down the street, someone told us where to go to get really close to it, and get photos with the famous LA icon, giant donut sign of Randy's Donuts.
It kind of looks like Endeavour is going through a donut drive-thru!
Incidently, Randy's was considerate/inconsiderate enough to be closed, but to continue to bake donuts and release DonutSmell into the air while we all stood there and salivated! Gonna need to get some donuts soon. Maybe I'll go to Randy's! They sure got a lot of free publicity out of this, since the shuttle (and about 15 tv cameras) was parked in front of the store for about 6 hours.
There were really a LOT of people there.
Everybody was happy though, and even though we smooshed ourselves in like sardines trying to get as close as possible for pics, everybody had remembered to take a shower, so it was all good! People were having fun kidding around and sharing a general love of all things space shuttle-ish. Pretty big fan club it has! (Twitter was going crazy on #endeavour. I think half of LA went to see it at some point.)
Lots of kids there, including some young photographers:
After standing around like that for awhile, they brought in the Toyota Tundra they were using to shoot the soon-to-be-famous TV commercial with Luke Wilson.
The crowd got all excited any time something happened, since the shuttle was just sitting there doing nothing for a really long time. So when the Tundra (red lettering on silver truck) showed up, it was like "Gentlemen, start your cameras!!"
Some photographers had very creative techniques for shooting over the heads of everybody else:
The shuttle had to cross the freeway on the Manchester Bouelvard overpass. When it was about time, we went to the Florence Avenue overpass, the next one to the north. It is actually quite close, and provided a great view. It was really wierd when the flow of cars on the freeway started getting thinner and thinner and then suddenly stopped. They had closed off the freeway in both directions.
Getting ready to cross:
Crossing:
Here's the video:
After it crossed the freeway, we sprinted back around to Manchester to watch it drive by. But, we had forgotten that Endeavour had to stop for awhile on the other side to change shoes. The robot powered trucks it was moving on weren't street legal for the overpass (or something), that's why the Tundra had to tow it. So, Endeavour had to switch back to the robot cars after crossing the freeway.
So once we got all sweaty sprinting around to get in front of Endeavour, we then got hypothermia (it was only 62, that's cold) sitting still waiting for it to tie it's shoelaces and get a move on. According to sources, the shoe-swap was supposed to take about an hour. Well, it ended up taking 4 hours. Nobody ever explained to the crowd what took so long, but's all good. It was worth the wait a hundred times over.
Unfortunately for them, but good for us, about 18,000 of our 20,000 new closest friends left during those 4 hours. Only the die-hard fans remained. By the time the shuttle was ready to roll again, it was 3:30 am. So we were able to move to a much better sidewalk spot than we had originally scoped out.
Well, that and the fact that our original sidewalk location, a nice grassy hill next to the Lotus 9 Motel, suddenly became a lot less appealing when, with no warning whatsoever, the sprinklers came on. A lot of shrieking and jumping about ensued! We didn't get toooo wet though. And it caused us to start up conversations with our new neighbors after we all rearranged ourselves on the Lotus 9 Motel's nice dry driveway. In my case, a lively Brit shooting a really nice camera. He was taking time-lapse photos of the crowd (I guess he was going to take time lapse photos of the shuttle going by - neat).
Everybody waiting around, and waiting around and waiting around. Lots of support vehicles clustered around Endeavour:
Then, FINALLY, it started rolling. Everybody started cheering. We were in a spot with a GREAT view, and had a front row seat as it went by.
I might have been heard screaming "Here it comes! Here it comes! Looklooklooklooklook!!!!" I think at one point I may have been jumping up and down too. Everybody was.
It came close. And I mean CLOSE. As it went by us, the body of the shuttle was about 20 feet away, and the wingtips were about 5 feet over our heads, about 5 feet away.
As it moved on past us, we took some pictures of the jet engines, which were really impressive in person, but hard to photograph at night:
Then we started following it down the sidewalk, walking under the wingtip. Nobody (security guards or fans) seemed to notice or care -- a few of us were doing it. Everybody was hypnotized by how cool the whole event was, and busy taking pictures!
At one point as we followed and watched, the wingtip went within a foot of one of the buildings. Like they keep saying on TV, it was a tight fit! The drivers did a great job though, and it didn't have to stop and maneuver at all.
After a while of this we decided to get in front of it again so we ducked back one street and sprinted up ahead of it (you have to go pretty fast to pass a 2mph shuttle!) I'm not a runner, but we made it. While we were running down an alley, some other completely random guy who was also running down the alley yelled out to me "This is SO COOL!" Indeed. So many people sharing in the coolness too. Incredible rush.
When we came back to the street, there were a bunch of people who were shuttle 'virgins', as it hadn't passed them yet, and they were kind of jockeying for position, threading their way down the crowded sidewalk. At one point I stopped in the walkway for a quick photo (basically blocking it for a second), which was totally what everybody else was doing too, when this guy came up and we got to witness a treat of a reaction from him. I was videoing the shuttle, when the guy starts to get annoyed that I was blocking traffic. What he says next is priceless! So make sure your sound is up and listen till the end of the video. (Warning: Language advisory, but in a good way.) We were all laughing afterwards!
What an awesome evening it was! One of the best, and one I will certainly never forget.
(PS - as I was typing this, I see out my window that they must be doing the public "show" at the Forum right now, or wherever they decided to have it, because four white T-6 Texan warbirds are buzzing around in formation in that general vicinity. What do you want to bet there were 6, and they did the Missing Man Salute for Challenger and Columbia? Sniff. That Missing Man Salute always makes me cry.)
