SHUTTLE LAUNCH--

or so we were told

Folks lined the beach near Vero Beach, FL as far as the eye could see in both directions for Thursday's shuttle launch--all to no avail.  The time for lift-off came and went, and we saw and heard nothing.

Later I talked to a neighbor in our RV park who had driven more then 2 hours north to be close to Titusville and the launch pad and they enjoyed seeing about 2 seconds of flight before the shuttle disappeared into the clouds.

He also said the launch direction was to the East, not South down the coast toward us as most folks expected.  Hence its course of flight did not pass anywhere near our partly cloudy skies.

I guess our reward came in the form of avoiding the neighbor's 5 hour trip home in the massive traffic jam.

Meanwhile I had amused myself with a more commonplace form of local flight:

Photo data:  Canon Digital Rebel XTi camera with Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens at maximum focal length, 1/4,000 sec., exposure at f/5.6 and ISO 400 with camera operating in manual mode.

This shutter speed was fast enough to avoid camera movement and stop the bird's flight action and the aperature allowed sufficient depth of field to assist with sharp focus.  I used manual mode and focused by hand because in auto focus mode the camera was confused by the background waves and clouds.  Focus was a bit more challenging in the lower photo with the bird flying toward the camera.

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