trip

LOUISVILLE, Ky.--This weekend, I'll be heading to Nashville, Tenn., as part of Road Trip 2008, and I need your help, dear readers, to figure out what I should go and check out.

I'm already planning to visit the Parthenon there, and I have at least one music-industry destination already on the agenda.

But now I'm looking for something to visit that fits into the theme of Road Trip--it's got to be something photogenic and have a technology, business, science, or military angle.

I've never been to Nashville before, and I know that there's … Read more

BOWLING GREEN, Ky.--The four trucks loaded down with Corvettes that I saw heading south as I drove north on I-65 from the Huntsville, Ala., area had to mean something.

What it meant, of course, is that those cars, and every Corvette made since 1981, had come off the line at General Motors' assembly plant in this southwestern Kentucky town. I was on my way here to see that process in motion.

My visit to the Corvette factory was one of the stops I had most been looking forward to on Road Trip 2008, my voyage around the South in … Read more

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--I'm spinning around at high speed, and I'm going in all directions.

You might think it's a state of mind, but it was actually my body doing the spinning, as I was strapped into a multi-axis trainer, a three-ringed device used to demonstrate to participants at Space Camp here one of the things would-be astronauts had to go through to be chosen to be launched into space.

Space Camp, if you're not familiar with it, is an Alabama state program that since 1982 has given more than half a million kids a week of … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--I'd just walked into the press center here the day before the scheduled landing of Space Shuttle Discovery and located Allard Beutel, the head of public affairs, when I sensed that something was wrong.

Apparently, some little piece of the shuttle had broken off in space. Now, reporters from around the world were barraging Beutel and his team of NASA PR folks with demands to know what was going on.

"'You're stranding your crew in space, they can't come home,'" Beutel told me was the common sentiment he was getting from … Read more

GOOD HOPE, Ala.--Somewhere along Interstate 65, on my way to Huntsville, Ala., the home of Space Camp, I hit exactly 1,000 miles of driving since Road Trip 2008 began.

I'm sure that there will be many more of these milestones, since I still have many, many more places to visit on this trip, and since last year's trip clocked 4,891 miles.

Still, I love to commemorate these round numbers, so bear with me.

It's been a busy 1,000 miles. Over the last week, Road Trip 2008 has taken me to a wide variety … Read more

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--Back in 1999, in the salad days of the dot-com economy, when anyone with a start-up could launch an IPO and see their stock hit $80, I took my first steps into the world of reporting on the Internet.

Living in San Francisco and trying to get my foot in the door, I took a job with a company called ReacTV. It was quickly renamed "Zatso," as in "Is that so," and its business was producing Web-based newscasts for the online sites of local TV stations around the country.

Those of us who were … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Discovery has returned.

With a puff of smoke from its wheels touching down on runway 1-5 here, the space shuttle completed its 5.7 million mile mission Saturday at precisely 11:15 a.m. and 19 seconds EDT to the cheers of a crowd gathered to watch it land.

For the most part, it was an uneventful arrival, if you can call something like this uneventful.

For me, visiting Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on my Road Trip 2008 through the South, it was a wonderful experience. I knew I was coming here when I planned the … Read more

Update 8:15 a.m. PDT: Discovery has landed. At precisely 11:15 and 19 seconds a.m. EDT Saturday, the space shuttle completed its 5.7 million mile journey by touching down here. Stay tuned for a story and photos.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--"Discovery, you are go for deorbit burn."

With those words, spoken at 9:48 a.m. EDT by someone at mission control in Houston and heard here over a loudspeaker system, we all got the good word that Space Shuttle Discovery, which has been on a two-week mission to the International Space Station, … Read more

ORLANDO, Fla.--If you've ever flown on a commercial airline, you've probably wondered how air traffic controllers do their jobs.

There's certainly lots to it, but increasingly, software from a company called Adacel is behind it all.

The company was originally Australian, but relocated here. It employs several dozen people to create software used by civilian aviation agencies like the FAA in the United States and its counterparts in other countries to do a better job managing the ever-growing amount of airplanes flying today.

I visited Adacel here Thursday as part of Road Trip 2008, my voyage … Read more