A Mecca, of sorts...
Oct 28, 2003
Living in the DFW area, there isn’t a well established, telescope store. I mean, we’ve got “The Observatory” in Dallas, which might be okay if I actually visited it, despite some of the things I’ve heard. But I’m talking about actually going to one of the great stores like OPT, Anacortes Wild Bird and Telescope, or Astronomics; stores that have great reputations and tons of great stuff.
On my way back from a technology conference in Galveston, Texas, last Saturday, I decided to take a detour to a place that I consider a Mecca, of sorts. Not knowing anything but the address and not having a Mapsco in my possession, I figured I’d take an eastern turn towards NASA off of I45 in Houston hoping to find “Sheppard St.” Having only been in Houston a handful of times in my life (Texas is a big place, afterall), certainly Sheppard St. would be around NASA, right? You know, must be the street right in between Armstrong Ave. and Glenn Drive?!?
So when I drove around NASA for 10 minutes and didn’t see any signs of streets named after astronauts, I decided to do what most people would have done in the first place: I picked up my cell phone and dialed information.
Once I got the phone number, I called the store for directions where a man named Darren immediately informed me that I had another 30 miles to go, back toward the center of town. Equipped with this new found knowledge and knowing that it was only a few minutes out of the way off my route back to DFW, I decided that I had the time before the store closed at 4 PM.
I made it to Land, Sea, and Sky Texas Nautical Repair at 3 PM. Plenty of time to spare.
Those unfamiliar with this rather strangely named store will not have known that every Takahashi telescope purchased in the USA, at one time or another, made its way through this store. Being the sole distributor of Takahashi telescopes and mounts in America, Texas Nautical Repair (TNR) ships each and every one of these scopes and mounts to the aforementioned, high volume stores where the majority of such Takahashi equipment is purchased by the end consumer. TNR also sells this equipment directly to the consumer; however, one trip to their website to check out their price lists and you’ll understand why so many people purchase their Taks through the other retailers.
I knew I should expect a bunch of other stuff than Takahashis. I mean, any store based on the themes of land, sea, and sky might have some interesting things on display…and I wasn’t wrong.
Parking was in the back, which meant that the back door was my entrance. Nautical stuff, like compasses, model ships, and other sea stuff that I don’t have a clue about was all over place. There were globes, clocks, microscopes, binoculars, eyepieces. Since I expected the sole distributor of Taks in the country to have EVERY model of scope on display, you can imagine my slight disappointment when the only two Taks were an FSQ-106, which I currently own, and an FS-78, which I used to own…and only the FS-78 was on a Tak mount, a small one at that. Heck, the sacrilege of the Tak 106 on a Losmandy G-11 mount in the midst of Takahashi-heaven was almost enough to make me cry. Hmmm…
I asked Darren, “Where are the Baker Ritcheys? The classic FCT triplets? The big honking NJP and EM500 mounts that I’ve been lusting over for months now? TEMMA????????”
“Not enough room,” Darren said simply.
Sigh…
Having once talked to owner Art Ciampi on the phone regarding questions about Tak adapters, I thought maybe the owner of the store would be there. “It’s a Saturday,” I thought to myself. “I wouldn’t be here either.”
Didn’t matter. Darren was quite adept at answering every question I had, and believe me when I say that I gave him quite the beating! I brought in my existing Tak adapters so he could tell me what I was missing. I found some books that I’d been wanting. I looked all over the store at the neat stuff, including the sweet Starmaster truss dob in the store window. I looked at color filter wheels for my SBIG ST7e. I played with the microscopes and looked over the wonderful binoculars on display.
The hour flew by, without a single regret that I didn’t get to see more that the two Taks on display.
So what did Darren help me to purchase? 3 books, a 7x50 finder and bracket for my Tak 106, and a 2” EP adapter. Oh, and what the heck…a Garmin eTrex Vista GPS device.
You didn’t think I’d enter Tak-heaven without spending some money, did you?