This picture was taken on Saturday in Titusville, Florida. If you look closely, you'll see the space shuttle not taking off in the background as thousands of people watch with excited anticipation along the banks of the Indian River, 19 miles across the water from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center.

I'm standing in a field on U.S. 1 just south of the Miracle City Mall, which the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide recommends as one of the best places to not see the shuttle take off:

If you can't get a launch pass I suggest you come to Titusville. Go east on State Road 50 from I-95, to US-1. Go north on US-1 to the 'Miracle City Mall' at Harrison. Park somewhere north of this spot. Anywhere north along highway 1, or east (as far as you can) along highway 406 (402) is good (specifically Sand Point Park), just as long as you can see the VAB and don't have trees blocking the view.

Because another disaster would mean the end of the program, I dragged the kids on one of those 'memory of a lifetime' moments when parents force their children to enjoy something under protest, like the time in 1981 my siblings and I were subjected to a live performance of the Gatlin Brothers.

Traffic was horrible on Interstate 95 between the scheduled launch, the Pepsi 400 race in Daytona and July 4 weekend vacationers. After the shuttle was declared a no-go because of gathering storm clouds, the three-mile drive back out of Titusville took an hour.

The family will never forget the time we spent six hours in the car to stand spend 45 minutes in a weed-filled vacant lot.

On Sunday, we saw the launch from Butler Beach south of St. Augustine, which looked like a lot like this picture from Canova Beach to the south of the cape. This was a thrilling experience that left hundreds of beachgoers awestruck -- especially if miraculous feats of human engineering make you weepy.

But next time around, I'm going to get close enough for the launch to shake loose a few fillings.
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This phone has brought web access to a remote South Carolina campground and now the interstate highway system, leaving the bathroom as my last safe haven from total connectivity.

The SPH-A920 connects to the laptop's USB port and acts like a dial-up modem, requiring a call to one of my ISP's access numbers. The claimed speed of 230.4 Kbps seems like wishful thinking -- I'm getting one page load of web traffic per half-mile, and the connection dropped a few times as we zoomed through the Sumter National Forest. But the phone was fast enough for me to read the news and update the Drudge Retort.

When I first attempted to hook up the modem, Windows XP wouldn't install it without a driver. Sprint didn't include a CD and there weren't any A920 drivers available from the Sprint or Samsung support sites. The problem was fixed when I ran Connection Manager for Sprint PCS, a free download that installed the driver after a reboot while the phone was disconnected.

I routinely drop phones on hard surfaces, so without Sprint's blog-swag program I wouldn't have tried an expensive phone that offers live TV, music downloads, games, a camera and decent web access. After using this one on the road, I'm sweating the prospect of my free review period ending in a matter of days.

If I can't resist the urge to take the phone to the bathroom, I won't provide such a high-resolution photograph.
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