I left the clinical site at Long Beach Care Center at 1540H trying to hurry due to the fact that I will be going to take a few hours rest for quite a bit because I will be working during that night. I accidentally took the 405 N Freeway and impulsively exited at Centinela Boulevard and then the traffic started to get congested after I exited at the boulevard.
I didn't know that there was an important event happening during that time. The ramps were closed so I immediately thought there was a serious police chase knowing that the Inglewood Area was notoriously famous for street gangs and theft violence. That's how it is here in Los Angeles.... I didn't know about the Endeavour's transport to the famous Los Angeles Museum. I was totally unaware of it. I was just focused on going home and that's it.
It took me more than three hours to get off from the very congested afternoon traffic along Crenshaw Boulevard and I was so pissed off because I have only few hours left to sleep. That night, I went to work half asleep like a zombie, very tired and exhausted. From there I overheard from one of my certified nursing assistant that she needed to go home early because the streets will be closed that night due to the Shuttle Endeavour's parade. I asked her when and where will that be happening and she told me that the city's public works were actually transporting the big space plane at that very moment in Inglewood.
I know about the shuttle's being relocated here in Los Angeles from Houston because I saw some pictures online that it was being secretly kept in one of an isolated hangar in LAX. I also saw some of my friends and students at school who took nice pictures of it at the airport. I didn't know that NASA had donated it to the California Science Center here in Los Angeles. I was very naive about the things that were happening in my surroundings. I have no idea really. I was clueless.
I've heard that the snail-like street procession was very slow because of some hurdles or problems along the way. The plane's wide wingspan had some trouble passing through the street's light posts, houses, matured trees, and other road structures such as building corners and edges. It took them two days to transfer the enormous plane and finally it had arrived at it's final destination and resting place, what I mean eternal retirement place on Sunday October 14, 2012 at around past midnight as what the news had revealed.
Having the Shuttle Endeavour here in Los Angeles entails a lot of benefits for the locals and visiting tourists especially boosting the tourism projects of the city of Los Angeles. Many people for sure will come to Los Angeles to curiously take a glimpse of this magnificent piece of space history which boosted a record of going out of the earth's atmosphere for more or less than two dozen times as a fact. I myself will probably make an effort to see it once all this commotion and pandemonium will eventually died down.
My adopted town was so lucky to be the sole recipient of the Shuttle Endeavor. It will be probably a great feeling to have it seen in person. I am extremely jealous pf those people who had personally witnessed how it was successfully moved along the narrow streets of Los Angeles after it trekked a twelve mile distance of slow paced transport until it had reached it's final home base which is the California Science Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Wow, I was so dumbfounded of this great honor and opportunity. Thank you very much Almighty NASA for selecting my famous second hometown to showcase this well known piece of our American space odyssey and history which wonderfully displayed the huge success of space exploration and space science from the 60's to the 90's. Los Angeles was indeed fortunate to have it.
I provided some pictures here in this blog relevant to the transport which I snipped from Google images and I was really envious with those who had witnessed it personally. I really didn't know about it not until last Friday when I overheard it from one of my staff who told me about it because she was in a hurry to go home due to some expected delays in traffic that will occur during that night. Actually, she was taking a bus in going home near the shuttle's route, that's why she was so jittery to leave early at work. I myself had tasted the long hours of traffic when I went home from my clinical route during that day.
Well, just in time for my hometown friend who is visiting from the Philippines this week then maybe I can bring him to see this fascinating space artifact one of these days. At least I have one agenda to show every time I have a visitor coming to see or tour Los Angeles and Hollywood.
I love LA as my adopted town. Having lived here for more than thirteen years, it had really made me rooted more to stay here. It is a banal thing to really expect that kind of reaction but honestly I felt more than that. To me Los Angeles had influenced me greatly in every way. I then considered myself as a true "Angeleno" and I am proud to have lived here for so many years and claim it as my second hometown apart from my birth hometown in the Philippines.
The Shuttle Endeavour's spectacular slow paced parade had also intrigued me that's why in order to indelibly remember this date I have to blog an article about it so that in the future when I kind of browse this site I can say; "Oh, I remember that day when they moved the big plane from an isolated hangar at Los Angeles Airport (LAX)......." And I can attest that I have unfortunately experienced the worse traffic of LA during the time when they gradually towed the Shuttle Endeavour on the narrow streets of South Los Angeles.
This article will attest to all of that and I am proud I have written this blog for my future reminiscence. Yeah...... kind of anticipating what I needed to remember significantly when my brain's grey matter will eventually lessened, sclerosed, and blur my remote memory.
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