Episode #31
Four Low, Five Year Missions, and Foggy Glasses
Jon's still on a boat, so Bill Taylor takes the Captain's chair — and brings a Ford Bronco and a lifetime of Star Trek with him. Bill walks through the Bronco Off Rodeo, the complimentary off-road training Ford throws in with every Bronco, which he went into swearing he'd never take his own truck off pavement and came out of shopping for tires at lunch. Then the real story: a pilgrimage to Ticonderoga, New York, where a fan named James Cawley used the original studio blueprints to rebuild the Enterprise set inside a converted grocery store. Bill sat in the captain's chair. It's terrible. He hit the red alert button anyway. Along the way — the neighbor who almost got Christa McAuliffe's seat on Challenger, meeting Gene Kranz at a Saturn conference, a Klingon at an Atlanta convention that ended Bill's convention career, and Nashville humidity that fogs your glasses at 70 degrees. Key topics • Buying a Bronco on New Year's Eve incentives, then 4,000+ trouble-free road miles • Ford's free Bronco Off Rodeo at the base of the Great Smokies • Bronco vs. Wrangler — materials, road manners, width, and what each is actually for • How the original Enterprise blueprints ended up with a fan in upstate New York • The bridge, the transporter sliders, the red alert, and the worst chair in Starfleet • Fan vs. fanatic, and why picking the franchise apart misses the point • The neighbor who nearly flew on Challenger — and Challenger as a crisis-comms case study • Gene Kranz, Huntsville, Space Camp, and the Lea Thompson-to-Star-Trek-director throughline Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=15325671) or Buy Us A Coffee at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/PoddiMouths Visit https://www.poddimouths.com to listen to past episodes, shop the merch store, and so much more! Wanna start your own podcast? Get started with Riverside.fm by clicking https://riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=campaign_1&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=rewardful&via=poddi Chapters 00:00 — Cold open and intro 00:38 — The Bronco in the background: why Bill bought it 03:42 — Bronco Off Rodeo: Ford's free off-road training in Tennessee 05:51 — What off-roading actually is (spoiler: four low, crawling) 07:46 — Garage studios, Michigan weather, Tennessee humidity 10:53 — The real reason Bill's here: a Star Trek pilgrimage 11:10 — Growing up in the space race, building phasers out of scrap 12:36 — James Cawley, the blueprints, and the Ticonderoga replica set 14:29 — Arriving for the tour (and discovering it's private) 16:04 — Transporter room, Kirk's quarters, sick bay, main engineering 17:01 — The bridge, and the captain's chair nobody warns you about 20:01 — Hitting the red alert button 20:42 — Nick's entry point: the movies, and Star Trek IV with his dad 22:22 — Strange New Worlds, Captain Pike, and fan vs. fanatic 24:19 — "There's no bad Star Trek" 26:21 — The neighbor who almost flew on Challenger 29:08 — Challenger as a crisis-communications case study 30:30 — Apollo 13 and meeting Gene Kranz 33:34 — Huntsville, Space Camp, and the Lea Thompson connection 36:29 — Verdict: Bronco or Wrangler? 39:27 — Ford vs. Chevy tribalism, and a Taurus tangent 41:37 — Wrap-up and where to find Vehicle Nanny
