Fly over country

Yup, greetings from the fly over state of Iowa. I've lived here since graduation from a great midwestern University and life in Iowa is good but getting out of here is expensive. To fly out of Des Moines is pricey; To drive out of Des Moines, either by I-35 to the south or north, promises you hours of countryside. Go South to MCI, and its 3 hours; go North to MSP, and its 4 hoursl To go East or West on I-80, that great ribbon of concrete, (which I read somewhere else today, that the nation's interstate highway system is 50 years old...wow!), means, at least 6 hours in ORD, 2 hours to OMA, 8 hours to DEN, and 22 to BDL. Thats alot of driving, but I've done it all, and we do live in a Big Country.

As you can see I use city codes instead of city names because I used to work heavily, in the airline industry, back in the mid-eighties. I was forced to memorize city codes and now they are just stuck in my head. SCE is State College, PA. EYW, is Key West, Florida. PWK is Palwaukee airport in Wheeling, Illinois, not far from where I grew up. Sitting on my patio with my family, eating dinner, and watching the "heavies" flyover our house, enroute to ORD. Oh how my father used to curse those planes. I loved taking a break from dinner, (particularily chicken on the bone), and walking out in the yard and spying the 747s, that were inbound from Europe. Nowadays, if you were go to plane spotting from my yard in Illinois, you'd see 747s, A340s, 767s, 777s. The big plane that everyone is braggng about is the A380 but it may be awhile until we see it state side. Who knows what US airline will be the first to get them, and fly them here in the states?