One wild, weird weekend

(This was an alternative column I wrote that was never published.)

My life keeps getting more surreal by the day.

The weekend of March 13-14 makes a perfect example. My oldest son, Wesley, lives near Orlando, Fla., and that Saturday he got married again. He and Dena were supposed to have a big wedding last April, but as the pandemic began closing everything down, they hurried up and essentially eloped a month early on St. Patrick’s Day. My wife got to fly in to be there, but the rest of us watched on Facebook Live.

Wes and Dena didn’t have a honeymoon and they were basically denied the big wedding they had planned. So they waited a year and redid their vows with a full-blown ceremony and reception. That was the purpose of our visit that weekend. Most of the family arrived in Florida the Wednesday before. I flew in Friday night, arriving just after midnight. We had three families staying at a beach rental in Cape Canaveral, which is close to the wedding venue. That morning as Wesley and his brothers left to get ready, the rest of us took a stroll on the beach. At that same time, my daughter in Colorado was texting photos of the two feet of snow in her yard.

When the rest of us got to the venue, everything began to unravel. On our way there, we got a panic call from Wes saying they had no topper for the cake. We assured him we would take care of it, although we didn’t know how. When the bartender arrived, there was no booze. Each thought the other was providing it. Fortunately, she had time to run out and get some. When Dena’s mother arrived, she brough the wrong box and Dena was left without the jewelry she had picked out. Other glitches arose but each was overcome.

When the cake arrived, it was a sight to behold. Three-fourths of it was a traditional, lacy layer cake. One fourth of it was done in a steampunk style. It had all kinds of gears, pipes and knobs sticking out of it. Hidden in a tiny alcove was a gnome, which was supposed to be part of the original cake topper before Dena smartly vetoed it.

Because Wes and Dena like steampunk, the boutonnieres were metal roses. The leftover roses made the perfect cake topper and it all looked like it was planned. It was the most memorable wedding cake I’ve ever seen.

The wedding ceremony was outdoors (next to a cow pen) and was conducted by Lt. Col. Brandon Moore, who is Wesley’s uncle and an Army chaplain. I was able to stream the service live on Facebook for the rest of the family who couldn’t be there to see. After the service we retreated inside the barn for the reception. I swelled with pride to see how well Wesley’s teenage brothers handled the toast. They seem so grown-up now.

The rest of the evening was very enjoyable with plenty of food, dancing and socializing.

Now this is the point where things started to get strange. That night was daylight savings, so we all had to remember to set our clocks ahead an hour. That normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but we all got up at 5:30 a.m. and strolled out to the beach to watch as SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket into space and its booster safely returned for an upright landing on a drone barge at sea. It was an incredible sight to see. That was the third launch I have seen and the first at night.

The launch, however, was just the beginning of our space adventure. A group of us went to Kennedy Space Center for the day. My wife, Sandy, her sister, Susan Moore, and four of our kids all went. We’re all big space geeks. Sandy and Susan’s parents worked at Johnson Space Center for a while during the Apollo program.

The highlight of the visit was seeing Space Shuttle Atlantis. It is beautifully displayed at an angle and can be viewed from three levels. An unexpected bonus was seeing a display of some of the wreckage from space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. I did not know that was there and it was breathtaking. The first launch I’ve ever seen was Columbia in 1995. The launch held the record for the most delays, so Atlantis was already on the adjacent pad. I saw Atlantis again about 10 or 11 years ago as it flew overhead on the airplane on a return to JSC. Finally seeing it up close was mesmerizing. We also enjoyed seeing the Mercury Sigma 7 and Gemini 9A capsules and other artifacts.

The next morning, I had a 6 a.m. flight home on Frontier (the rest of the family was staying longer). We hit a 20-minute detour on our way to the airport and I got their 50 minutes before the flight. I arrived to huge lines at the check-in counter. Ten minutes after arriving, an agent told me the flight closed five minutes earlier. I missed my flight and Frontier was quite rude about it to me and another passenger in the same predicament.

To make a long story short (believe me, I’d love to rant about Frontier because this isn’t the first bad experience I’ve had with them), I ended up with a ticket on Southwest that got me home only two hours later than planned.

I got to work and was thoroughly exhausted. I was running on about four hours of sleep and suffering from both the daylight savings time change and jet lag. I managed to get through the day on adrenaline, lots of coffee, and my head spinning with treasured memories of space shuttles, rocket launches and a wedding that went off without a hitch (they were already married, so no hitch). The best part of it all was experiencing everything (minus the flight mishap) with my family. We’ve got a weekend to remember for a long time to come.