All right, what you're about to hear is one of the cooler hours of my journalistic career.

Last Thursday at the Crack of Dawn, I hopped into an Uber, drove through the quiet early morning streets of New York City, and boarded a flight for Orlando, Florida.

My ultimate destination, the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing,

Omega was hosting three days of programming,

and Hodinke's senior writer James Stacy

was already on the ground there snapping photos

and hopefully working on his tan.

But last minute, Omega was able to arrange something pretty special for us

that made a day trip down to Florida a total no-brainer for me.

Less than two hours after wheels down,

I found myself sitting across a table from General

Tom Stafford. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the General, suffice it to say he's a

US space program legend. A few quick CV items, he flew two Gemini missions, Apollo 10 and Apollo Soyas.

He has way too many firsts to his name for me to mention them here, but we'll get into all of that

in our conversation. And this being Hodinke Radio. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that he's

also been on the board of omega since the early 80s and led development of products

like the X-33. The man is as real deal as he gets and exceedingly humble despite the fact that calling him a genuine American hero is likely an understatement.

It was such a privilege to spend some time with him.

Now you're not going to hear a ton of

James or me in this one as we both kind of just wanted to soak in everything General

Stafford had to share. It's better that way I promise. I'm your host Stephen Pulverin, and this is Hodincky Radio.

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