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Life’s Ironies
By Mark D. Roberts | Monday, March 15, 2010
Life is full of ironies. When you start looking for them, you’ll see them all the time. They make life interesting.
For example, last week I had a business meeting in Dallas. I flew Southwest Airlines, which uses Dallas Love Field, an older, smaller airport about ten miles from the garganutan Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Love Field is closer to downtown Dallas, and much, much less crowded.
The flight path from San Antonio to Love Field, however, goes almost directly on top of DFW. Here’s the proof:
When you fly into DFW, you never get such a view of the airport. So the best way to see DFW from the air is to fly the airline that doesn’t go to DFW. That’s ironic.
Another irony in my life has to do with my transportation to work. Growing up in Southern California, I spent probably hundreds of hours driving on Interstate 10 (the Santa Monica and San Bernardino freeways, as we called them). For much of the day, traffic on “the 10″ is terrible. You can count on crawling along for miles.
These days, I have a half-hour-long commute on, you guessed it, Interstate 10. I-10, as we call it in Texas, is a wide open highway that passes through the scenic Texas Hill Country. Unless it’s dark, when the speed limit is slower, I almost always roll along at 70 miles per hour. Not far beyond Kerrville, where I work, the speed limit goes up to 80.
If I tell the folks in California that I have a half-hour commute on “the 10,” then envision a five-mile drive in parking-lot type traffic, not a gorgeous drive at top speeds through some of the prettiest country anywhere.
I drive to work in a Toyota Tundra truck. No, I haven’t had any trouble with the accelerator, or anything else, for that matter. This truck has had very few problems. I bought my truck six years ago in Southern California. But where was it made? Right down I-10 from where I live, in San Antonio. Another of life’s sweet ironies! (Photo: A view of I-10 from my truck. Not a lot of traffic here!)
Are there any similar ironies in your life?
Topics: Fun |
4 Responses to “Life’s Ironies”
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March 15th, 2010 at 5:24 am
I live on the east side of the metro Atlanta area. The Atlanta airport’s runway alignments are due east/west. If the wind is out of the west, which is more than half the time, planes will take off and land from east to west. Many times as I am flying home approaching from the east I can look out the window and see my house. It’s a homesick feeling to be so close, and to know that I still have another 10 minutes in the air, plus taxi time, plus navigating the terminal, getting to the car, and driving for nearly another hour to get back home. I finally get to see my house from the ground about 2 hours after I have seen it from the air.
Your airplane story just reminded me of that.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
When I worked in Hancock, we sent a fair amount of mail to Calumet, which was about 10 miles to the north. However, the mail was first routed to Iron Mountain, roughly 100 miles to the south. It then had to pass back through Hancock, because you can’t get to any points north of Hancock without going through Hancock (only one road!). I don’t know that delivery was any slower, but it sure seemed odd.
March 15th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
I have the same experience as Ray when I fly home to Seattle, I used to travel to San Jose for work and my husband had to leave for the airport to pick me up, before my flight left San Jose. But often the approach to SEATAC went right over our house.
March 16th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Growing up as a child of the 70’s, my teacher parents thought it would be best if there was no television in our house. They were kind of adamant about it, actually. Several times, church and family members offered to give our family one of their TVs in case we were simply too poor to afford one. My parents felt that reading and playing would be much better for our little brains than first run episodes of Brady Bunch and Love Boat. I think there is plenty of evidence to show that they were right. Imagine their surprise and a lifetime of chuckles about the ironies of life when I chose working in television as my career.