When Scotty Makes You Think About Midlife

"He would rather have flown when he was alive, of course," said Wende Doohan, widow of James Doohan, who played the part of Scotty on the original Star Trek.

This is a quote that I found wildly funny yesterday. You see, Scotty has passed away and his widow was commenting about his ashes being sent into space on Space-X's rocket a few days ago. So, the addition of "of course" to the statement that Scotty would rather have been alive for the voyage into space really tickled my funny bone. But, after a night's sleep thinking about this, I realized that, for me, this quote is kind of profound.

This is a guy who was all about space exploration and was teleporting tribbles through space before my family had a color television. Though he may have acted in other shows, we really only knew him as Scotty, who kept telling Kirk that "she's giving it all she's got" when he'd phone down to the engine room and tell Scotty that if the Enterprise didn't go a little bit faster they'd end up being lunch to some very aggravated aliens. What a shame that his first actual trip into space was after he was dead.

So, in my midlife crisisness state of mind, I've started thinking that I don't want to end up like Scotty with my wife saying, "He would have really enjoyed doing that when he was still alive." Who would have thought Scotty would reach out from the grave to teach me a lesson about life? Not me. I'm actually more of a Next Generation kind of a Trekkie.

Now, I'm not talking about a bucket list. That's a few decades off for me. Still, it's time to think about things I'd like to do before my wife sends my ashes into space. Do I want to go into space? Not really. Pretty much the best ride into space is going to be with Sir Richard Branson and, while I think it would be fun to have champagne with him during the flight, let's face it that this guy doesn't have a great track record of landing balloons on Earth let alone returning to Earth from space. I think I'll give Virgin Galactic a few years to work out the kinks.

I really don't have anything so dramatic in mind. I think it would be fun to bike up the California coast, or at least part of it, someday. I could see myself picking up the saxophone again and playing the occassional gig someday. I'd like to eat pho in Vietnam instead of the San Francisco Financial District someday. Other than that, I think my voyage to space is more about just trying to enjoy where I'm at and who I'm with. Thankfully, I'm surrounded by awesome and supportive family and friends on a daily basis, so this isn't a hard thing to do.

I guess Scotty's advice to us, other than "Don't get typecast as a Scottish guy who runs the engine room on spaceships" (Not a lot of parts available other than Scotty. I'm just sayin'.), is to do what you want to in life...now. It doesn't have to be big. You don't have to jump out of a plane, unless that's your thing. But, make sure you do that thing that you've always wanted to try before your wife is telling CNN, "He would have rather flown when he was alive, of course."

Of course.

Space-X, Make Us Cool Again!

I turned 46 last week and that had me thinking about what I would have expected life to be like when I was younger. When I was 16, I could not have imagined I'd someday think 50 was right around the corner. Yet, here it is creeping up on me. I guess my biggest question to the powers that be is, "Where is all the cool stuff?"

Retired with No Upgrade!

When I was 16, people would fly between New York and London at supersonic speedy luxury on The Concorde. The graceful looking plane had such a sleek, long nose that they would have to lower it when they were landing so the pilots could see the runway below out their windows. Champagne at more than 1,000 miles an hour. What's not to like about that?

So, now that I'm 30 years older, imagine my dismay that not only did they retire the Concorde, which apparently still required tubes like old-timey televisions used to use. But, they haven't replaced it with anything. In 30 years, air travel has gotten slower, not faster. What's up with that?

Retired with No Upgrade!

What else was around when I was 16? We could go to space and back with The Space Shuttle! Wow, if we can send a plane/rocket into space and bring it back and land it on a runway in 1982 then by 2012 we'll probably be close to building the first version of the Enterprise to go explore new planets, right? Well, unfortunately not. Now if we want to go to the International Space Station we built, we have to hitch a ride with the Russians and hope they still feel like providing taxi service to us as Cranky Putin Pants takes over.

So, no pressure guys, but Space-X, our only hope of regaining coolness is pretty much you guys. If you aren't familiar with Space-X, this is a private company that has built a space launch system and even has a price list on their website to take things up into space. It's sort of like the Mayflower Moving of space, but more expensive. Well, if Mayflower built their own carbon fiber super high-tech trucks and launched them into space. If you have $10.9 million around and a desire to get something into space, all you have to do is visit http://www.spacex.com/. At 12:44 a.m. PST Tuesday, they are going to launch a test capsule and attempt to reach the International Space Station and dock it. They were orginally going to launch last Saturday, but a computer ended the launch one second before liftoff. Better to find out there is a problem one second before instead of one second after liftoff. If they are able to launch it tomorrow morning, we're back! If not, we'd better send Putin a case of Florida oranges, because that's the only thing lifting off from Florida for a while.

And Don't Even Get Me Started About Not Having a Flying Car Yet!