I like to keep track of experiences in my life, and that includes my experiences in flight.
1 | My first airplane flight took teenager me, along with my family, from Oklahoma City through the airport in Dallas, Texas, to our ultimate destination of Nashville, Tennessee. This was a flight my mother won in a local radio call-in contest. |
2 | The next time I flew, was for a trip on which Oklahoma City Schools sent me to learn Student Team Learning with Dr. Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University. That trip took me through Dallas again to our destination in Baltimore, Maryland. |
3 | Trip number three was probably my honeymoon from Oklahoma City to Orlando, Florida, again with a layover in Dallas. I had to pay for this trip myself. |
45 | My only international excursion came in the form of a trip to Honduras in Central America. We flew out of the airport in Tulsa, with a layover in Austin, Texas, finally arriving in the impoverished nation (at a very interesting airport and runway) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I took this trip again a couple of years later. The church footed the bill for these trips. |
6 | Unfortunately, my fourth trip was with my family from Northwest Arkansas, through Dallas (of course), to Houston, Texas, where my wife's parents were staying as my mother-in-law underwent treatments for leukemia at M.D. Anderson Hospital. We flew stand-by on these flights with a family plan provided by the airline through a flight attendant who happens to be related to us. |
7 | Later, I traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, for a visit to the Ron Clark Academy. I was invited to sit in the classrooms of Ron Clark, Kim Bearden, and other top, energetic teachers. The travel this time was funded by Cecil Floyd's PTA. |
8 | On a more positive note, I applied to attend the Mount Vernon Teacher Institute and was accepted. Soon I was on a flight that passed through Dallas, Texas, to arrive in Virginia for a week at George Washington's estate. On this trip, I missed my return flight, and I ended up staying in the DFW airport overnight before returning to Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City. |
9 | The next year, I was privileged to attend the teacher institute at Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. Flying through Chicago, my destination airport was Burlington, Vermont, where I picked up a rental car to head toward the fort on the other side of Lake Champlain. This was the first and only time to fly out of and return to the Joplin airport. |
10 | This year, I hope to add a couple of airports to the list. Though I have been in the Springfield, Missouri airport, I have not flown in or out of there. In May, I'm hopefully headed that direction. If things go as planned, I will fly to Disney World in Orlando through the largest airport in Atlanta, Georgia. When selected and announced, Disney would bring me and 49 other teachers to Florida to celebrate their 50th anniversary and receive training in creativity. The return trip would bring me back through Chicago. |
11 | Finally, I'm headed to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia for another teacher institute. I'll get there from Springfield, Missouri, through Charlotte, North Carolina, returning the same way a week later. The teachers in attendance will spend hours in Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. Those in the know have told me that this triangle is Disneyland for history buffs. |
By my count, that's 17 airports during 11 trips, only one of which I actually paid for. Through these years, I have been privileged to take most of my trips as a result of earning them through an application process or being assigned trips for work. All of these have been rewarding in their own ways.
