I like to keep track of experiences in my life, and that includes my experiences in flight.
I put together the complete list two or three years ago, but looking at the next five years,
the times warrant a revisit and revision of the list.
I put together the complete list two or three years ago, but looking at the next five years,
the times warrant a revisit and revision of the list.
| 1 | My first airplane flight took teenager me, along with my family, from the Will Rogers World Airport in 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. |
| 4 5 | 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 through DFW 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 Elementary's PTA. |
| 8 | 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 | In 2022, I added a couple of airports to the list. Though I had been in the Springfield, Missouri airport, I had not flown in or out of there. In May, I headed that direction. I flew to Disney World in Orlando through the largest airport in Atlanta, Georgia. When selected and announced, Disney brought me, along with 49 other teachers to Florida to celebrate their 50th anniversary and receive training in creativity. The return trip brought me back through Chicago. |
| 11 | Soon, I was off to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia for another teacher institute. I got there from Springfield, Missouri, through Charlotte, North Carolina, returning the same way a week later. The teachers in attendance spent hours in Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown, sometimes referred to as Disneyland for history buffs. |
| 12 | As we look forward to Project Trails, my orientation trip will likely take me from the Joplin airport, through Chicago, and into Newark Airport in the northern part of New Jersey. |
| 13 14 15 16 | The next three trips for Project Trails will all be to a location in or around Lexington, Kentucky. The flights will have to be worked out, but I suspect they will be from Springfield, Missouri, through Chicago, perhaps ending in the Blue Grass Airport. It is possible that these flights could be routed through Charlotte, North Carolina, or Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas, but we shall see. This is definitely the most I will have ever traveled, especially in the air, in a short time.
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| 17 | For 2026, if all goes as planned, there are several airports awaiting my presence in Montana. Will I have to pass through Denver to get there? That seems likely. |
| 18 | In 2027, the plan is to reach a destination of Philadelphia and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. That should get me to the Philadelphia International Airport, again with the probability of getting there through Chicago. |
| 19 | The following year will likely take me through Chicago again, ending up in Washington, DC. This will be the airport in Virginia, the same place I missed my first flight when I traveled to Mount Vernon. I'll probably be a little more alert this time around. |
| 20 | For the final year of Project Trails, the plan is to visit New York City. The airport is the least of my anxieties on that trip, as land travel will be more bothersome. There are three airports for New York, including the one in north New Jersey - Newark - that I will already have visited. Two others, the famous JFK and LaGuardia are also available, so we'll see which I end up in. |
By my count, that's 23 or 24 airports during 20 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. When I consider that every one was a round trip with a layover both ways, I realize that means four planes per trip. Multiply that by 20 trips and it totals 80 planes - 80 takeoffs and 80 landings in my lifetime. I started out with no flight experience, and through the years, the opportunities have increased.
