Saturday, March 14, 2009

Support of my wife, and zero-gravity flight

A few days later I awoke around 5:30A.M. and decided to get out of my bed, since I couldn't fall asleep again. I had some breakfast and got dressed. I decided to head out to the park where I would once again meet Ryan. Today as I was on my way there I felt bad. I knew that most of the important stuff in my life has been talked about and there really won't be any other reason to meet Ryan again. I thought that even after we finished everything, we would meet another time and I would allow Ryan to ask me any other questions. I won't discuss anything unless he asks me to. Once again he was on the bench ready to go with his notebook and pen. The only difference is that he had something in a plate. It was breakfast for me. I had already eaten but I decided to have some of his to be nice. We talked a little while I ate and finally when I was finished I asked him where he would like me to begin. He replied by saying that it was up to me. We lasted talked about the time in my life when my illness worsened. I decided to talk a little about my wife. I told him that during this time when the ALS worsened my wife was a huge part of it. She cared for me, which might I say was a very difficult and stressful thing to do, until 1991. Ryan asked if my wife had died in that year. I replied by sating no. This was the year that we separated. She just decided to leave one day and didn’t really want to talk about it too much. However, I asked her the reason why all of a sudden she wanted to end our marriage. Part of it was due to the fact that I was becoming too hard to care for. The other reason she said was due to my increasing fame. It really wasn’t the life that she wanted, and I don’t blame her. Although we separated my wife and I had three children. Ryan asked if I ever remarried and I had. However in 2006 I divorced my second wife.
On my 65th birthday I announced my plan of a zero-gravity flight that took place in 2007. As a man of physics I was so excited to experience zero gravity, or a state of weightlessness, for myself. Richard Branson would finance the trip. Branson and his company, Virgin Galactic, have also been working on a suborbital spaceship that would be used to fly passengers. Hopefully, as it was first expected, will be ready to fly this year. However, I wouldn’t not be experiencing the zero gravity in a spaceship but rather a 727 Boeing, which is an airplane. I would experience about 25 seconds of weightlessness due to the same the plane ascends and descends. Before and during the flight I had a small team of doctors and nurses that were there in case anything went wrong and to make the flight as comfortable as possible for me. I had an amazing time I would enjoy to go back and possibly to space. This trip had also served as an important part in my illness. For a man that can barley move his entire body and can only speak from a voice synthesizer, it meant a lot for me and I’m sure anyone else with a disease or disability. Having no weight on my body almost felt good. It also gave me a chance not to think about my disability. I was able to float around and didn’t even need my wheelchair, which didn’t happen often, besides when I was in bed.
It was time for me to leave again. As I had expected we would only have about three more days to meet before the interview would be over. I hope that we would be able to meet from time to time even after we have finished with the interview.

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