Five Years Down the Road...

The above picture was taken by me five years ago. Almost exactly five years ago I was spending around twelve hours a day driving a red and yellow cement truck all over North Dakota. If someone had told me five years ago, "Ronnie, in five years time you'll be at the controls of a jet aeroplane" I would have called them a kook! But Father Time makes fools of us all... and I have never claimed to be anything but foolish.

This picture was taken just the other day, also by me. Those same red and yellow cement trucks are still working away in North Dakota. This time they are building a new runway in Bismark, but instead of sitting in the cab of one of those trucks I am sitting in the front of an airplane. Five years ago I had never flown a plane, or wanted to fly planes for that matter. The events that lead from the cab of a cement truck to the cockpit of a jet are baffling to me. I hate to be a lazy writer but I am going to use the phrase, "and then one thing lead to another." I had some extra cash in my pocket and some free time to kill and then one thing lead to another and I was flying a jet.

I'm gonna go off on a bit of a tangent for a moment, but please stay with me. Time is a funny thing. To some people five years can seem like an eternity, to others it can be looked back on as though it were yesterday. I happened upon a very interesting idea the other day that I subscribe to, but didn't know how to put into words until the other day. In all good science fiction where time travel is happening, the time travelers are warned that they MUST NOT CHANGE THE PAST! Everything must be exactly so or the consequences could be dire, even the smallest actions could change the course of the future... so, I ask you, why can't our actions in our real lives have a huge impact on our future? Five years ago I had barely even considered flying as a career, but when opportunity came knocking I went for it. I guess what I am trying to say, if anyone feels like things are impossible or that they don't know what they are going to do with their lives, the smallest things can have a huge impact on the future...