S-II (July 13)

Friday morning began with a drizzling rain. While on the freeway driving to the USSRC, it really started to rain. I commented to my wife, "Ah, rocket-moving weather!"

We arrived under the tent to find the all the welding done. In addition to welding the I-beams to the cradles, they also welded one of the USSRC I-beams cross-wise between the two Marshall I-beams for additional support. Shortly before 9:00, they were ready to roll.

And the third time proved to be the charm, and the S-II behaved properly during its journey to the Davidson Center.

After the S-II passed out of sight, I began to follow the same path I traveled when they moved the S-IC (across the grounds, toward the museum so I could get out to the front lot). However, I became the beneficiary of being in the very right place at the very right time.

There was a USSRC maintenance fellow (hello, Cowan!) in a golf cart. We'd him seen under the tent shooting home video earlier. Since it was still raining pretty hard and I had only a small umbrella, I asked if could hitch a ride around front. He said that he was going to go around back and motioned for me to hop in. He stopped off, got me a hard hat, and we took off chasing after the S-II crawler.

We initially took the same gravel road that the crawler took, but then went "off road," the golf cart fishtailing in the Alabama mud. We caught up with the S-II just as it began to near the open end of the Saturn V Center. He parked the golf cart and we charged into the building, inspected the newly-installed S-IC, and got a great view of the S-II as it moved in to the building.