Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #215 – Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Interesting challenge this week from John involving planes, trains and automobiles and the journeys that we take with them. While I’ve gotten in my share of journeys throughout the US, I thought I’d go the route of firsts that got me started traveling with this one…

Automobiles

My first car…a 1969 Chevy Malibu with a glass pack for sound. I had a lot of fun with this car. Sadly one afternoon with the car parked in front of my house, a woman came speeding down the street and somehow crashed into it. Lucky for her she wasn’t hurt, unlucky for me the car was totaled…ugh! This was before cell phones so no texting while driving, she wasn’t drunk and the street wasn’t narrow so never did figure out how it happened.

Trains

My first real train ride came when I went with my parents to Indianapolis to visit relatives. I remember leaving the downtown Pittsburgh train station at night and getting to Indy in the morning. Not sure what the deal was with the radio…lol. It was a fun trip and the bonus was getting excused from school for a week 🙂

Airplanes

How I came to take my first flight in an airplane is interesting. There was an engineer at the place where I worked at the time who loved to fly. Another co-worker and I, neither of us had ever flown before, got into one of those dare type things…I’ll go up if you do. We agreed to meet the engineer in a few days at a small local airport – more like a field…lol. I remember that day being very overcast and windy which I thought was great…no way we’re flying in this stuff. I’d make an appearance, we decide the weather is too bad to go up and we’d leave. When I got to the airport, the engineer was there but the other guy was a no show. Good deal, let’s go home…I win. But the engineer wasn’t ready to leave so somehow he talked me into going over to have a look at the plane, then sitting in the plane and the next thing I know we’re barrelling down the runway taking off…yikes!

I remember a few thoughts that ran thru my mind during the flight. One that came to mind was I was hoping this guy who was about in his early to mid-sixties and a bit more than slightly overweight was healthy. I also remember telling him if something goes wrong, don’t tell me until he fixed it…lol.

I ended up taking a few pictures with not so great of a camera. All in all it was a pretty fun first flight and I’ve never flown in that type of plane since. But every time I’ve been on a commercial jet, I think back to that first time and I have to laugh.

Thanks to John of Journeys with Johnbo for the theme this week.

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