One small step for man, (at least) one long-ass road trip for this blog

In the five years I've been writing this blog, I've gone a lot of places and done a lot of stuff (I'm interesting!). But one area remains unexplored: outer space. Well, that's gonna change. Because by the time you read this I will probably be on my way to Space View Park in Titusville, Florida, to attend a massive "Tweetup" and witness the launch of the launch of space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-135 mission. I say "probably" because it's raining and if the mission is postponed, we might get halfway there and turn back and then go back later. Or we'll go ahead, push forward and wait it out over there. Or something. Heck, our departure time has already changed four times since this morning. Nobody knows anything at this point. Well, that's not entirely true; here are some of what we've been told to expect from the Tweetup organizers warning welcome letter:

1.Traffic will be bad! ARRIVE EARLY!

2.SVPTweetup cannot reserve a place for you to sit! Arrive early!!
3.You are responsible for all expenses!
4.The weather will be hot and humid! Bring water!
5.Electricity and internet access will NOT be provided!
6.Traffic will be bad! Plan to stay late!

Yep, I'm going anyway. After all, I've never seen a space shuttle launch up close before and this is slated to be the last one! Well, not if I have anything to say about it, and as it stands right now, I don't. But they're expecting over a million people (!) to be there, like a Woodstock for astro geeks. And with that many space hippies dancing around and tripping on brown Tang, I figure I should be able to slip unnoticed past security, stow away aboard the shuttle and the next thing you know, boom, I'm in orbit, bitches. From there, anything can happen. I could comandeer a couple of robots, get hold of a laser gun and maybe hijack that baby to Mars.
That's admittedly a best-case scenario. But I'll be riding over with some people who are veterans of this kind of thing who are already mortified at the prospect of me saying and/or doing something inappropriately stupid to embarrass them and their fears are completely legitimate. So if nothing else, there should be some good material for the ol' blog. Unfortunately, there's no internet access at the park so I can't live-blog it but I'll write it up and have something on Monday. Of course, I plan to be on Twitter the whole time, so there's that.