Houston We Have a Problem

    Yesterday I was at my usual Friday afternoon stopping place when my friend Joe handed me the following newspaper article from the October 1, 2010 edition of the New York Daily News

    The major point to get out of this article is that our Congress just allocated $19 billion to possibly move a space shuttle to New York City.  So we got talking about this and we think that between me, Joe, and our friends John and Tony we could get a space shuttle to New York for a lot less money.  Why not?  We work out.  We might have to get Tony's cousin Bill to help out because Tony has that bad shoulder but with the five of us we can definitely handle it.

    I've done some research and while I'm not sure where we will be picking the space shuttle up I have based my cost estimates on moving one from Los Angeles, California to New York City.  That would pretty much be the longest route we would have to take and therefore the highest cost scenario.  We will definitely need to rent a truck and I have found that a very large cross country truck would cost $999.  I'm figuring that it will take us about four days to make the trip so we're looking at four days of meal allowances for five of us.  I don't want to be greedy but since I'm not sure where we will be stopping I'm asking for $50/person/day or a total of $1,000 for meals including tips.

    Now when it comes to lodging I can tell you that I have been on several over night golf trips when two guys have shared a room for a night.  But we're talking four nights here and John will not want to bunk with Joe.  Also, if we need Bill that would make an odd number of five so just who would get their own room.  You know what?  Since the government is paying I'm asking for five rooms for four nights at about $200/night or $4,000.  I'm sure Michelle Obama and her friends didn't all cram together on that trip to Spain but if our costs start to get out of line I suppose we could pull over and just sleep in the shuttle.  After all, people have slept in it before.

    Next is gas and tolls.  I have no idea what kind of gas mileage we will get hauling a space shuttle and while I'm fine with using my personal EZ Pass tag I'm not sure if the Ohio Turnpike for example even has an EZ Pass toll rate for a big truck carrying a space shuttle.  So for now I am going to assume a gas and toll allowance of $1,000 although I might have to submit a claim after the fact.

     Lastly, and I'm not trying to be greedy here, but if we're going to go through all of this effort to save the taxpayers a bunch of money I am going to ask for $1 billion to have a cocktail hour for our friends and family after we have delivered the shuttle.  After all, we're not looking to make money on the deal but we want a nice party afterward.  We don't need anything real fancy.  We're going to host it at the Red Rock Cafe in Garnerville, NY and we want our guests to be able to have a mixed drink with top shelf liquors instead of well brands.  I figure that if we budget carefully, maybe we can even have those jumbo scallops wrapped in bacon.

    Now here is the summary of my bid:

Truck rental            $              999
Meal allowance                     1,000
Hotel cost                            4,000
Gas and tolls                         1,000
Cocktail hour             1,000,000,000

Total                      $  1,000,006,999    

Plus tax.

    So at a total cost of $1,000,006,999 me, Joe, John, Tony, and Bill will save the taxpayers $18,000,993,001.  But I do have one last question.  Although my friends and I would not mind doing this and while we would save the taxpayers a shitload of money, we're talking about a space shuttle here.  Can't someone just fly it to New York?