Post #572423 by TikiTomD on Tue, Jan 18, 2011 10:48 AM

uncle trav, I’m indeed a rocket ranch veteran. I was fortunate to be part of the launch operations engineering team for the Space Shuttle Orbiter at Kennedy Space Center in the early days leading up to the inaugural launch of the Shuttle (Columbia) in April of 1981. For some time now, I’ve been working on the large unmanned expendable rockets at the Cape.

Decades ago I recall visiting the former winter home and laboratory of Thomas Edison in Ft. Myers. He planted a beautiful tropical garden that exists to this day. I can just imagine him sitting amongst the palm trees, ficus and bamboo in his garden at the end of the day while watching the sun sink low over the Gulf of Mexico and sipping his latest invention, the precursor of the Zombie… something he shared with a certain traveler adventurer named Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (later known as Donn Beach) before his passing in 1931. This didn’t really happen, I’m sure, though I’d like to think that one of the world’s most prolific inventors ever could have been a master mixologist.

Thanks so much for sharing your impressions, and please stay warm… it must be hard for a former Floridian to thrive in a Michigan winter; you must be hibernating in that basement tiki bar.

TikiHardBop: I’m astounded that you, McTiki and apparently a lot of other tiki tipsters are in my immediate neighborhood… we must have crossed paths at Hukilau 2010, but in my case without proper preparation in The Storm Shelter. I’ll be on the lookout for this year’s event.

Tom