Review ::: Bike Event - Tour de KSC

The Tour de KSC occurred yesterday, October 17th, 2009. Here's the announcement from the Zoobird Events section, complete with a link to the Tour de KSC website. Click on the photo above to see a set of all the photos I took at this event. That's my friend and host to the event, Mike Blake, with the guy in the astronaut suit in the photo above. Click
here for a Google map of the event location.

Hundreds of cyclists converged upon the Kennedy Space Center. The cool thing was that we had access to areas that are normally closed off to the public. And, we could see all of it via bike!

Thats the Vehicle Assembly Building, also known by the initials "VAB". The government loves to use initials whenever possible to describe things. E.g., KSC - Kennedy Space Center, etc. You can get an idea of how big the building is by noticing the car right in front of it, in the parking lot. It's huge!

I rode my vintage '64 model Bianchi Gran Sport. Click on the photo above to see a set of detailed photos of the bike, in case you're a Bianchi enthusiast.

I got to get close to a real astronaut suit and see the detail!

If you look closely you'll see the Shuttle in the background of this shot (above) - staged and ready to go!

This event was available only if you were the guest of a NASA employee. My friend Mike Blake was my host. He's at the far right in the photo above holding some delicious post-ride pizza and Gatorade. We hooked up with interns from Embry Riddle University, the highly respected, mainly engineering school in Daytona. That's Allison, Amanda Pollock, and Rafael ("Rafi") from left to right in the photo above. They're interns at NASA! So cool to be doing that while in college...

That's Rafi clowning in the photo above. He hurt his shin because he didn't see a guard cord cordoning off an area and he fell off his bike. I played doc and helped patch him up. No major damage. In fact, Rafi's running the Longleaf triathlon the day after this bike ride!

Here's a shot of some rockets in the Rocket Graveyard.

And, here's a shot of the Shuttle Atlantis STS 129, enlarged to the extent that I can from a shot at 2 megapixels from my iPhone. Even behind the scenes at KSC, we couldn't get too close to the shuttle. According to NASA, "Space shuttle Atlantis will deliver components including two spare gyroscopes, two nitrogen tank assemblies, two pump modules, an ammonia tank assembly and a spare latching end effector for the station's robotic arm to the International Space Station." It's scheduled to lift off in November.


There were all sorts of bikes: recumbent, retro choppers, racers, Mike's Trek 8000 mountain bike, you can see that one in the first photo of this article. I believe my Bianchi was the oldest bike there, at 45 years old. People were pretty impressed with its roadworthiness. It had no trouble keeping pace with all the other ultra modern bikes.

A great time was had by all. Hopefully, you'll see some of the participants here on Zoobird soon!