Today, Lisa took a plane from Marquette, Michigan to Seattle, Washington (with a short layover in Detroit to change planes.) The flight from Detroit to Seattle (A distance of 1920 Miles) took a little over 5 hours. I got to thinking about the wagon trains west and the hardships people faced doing so. Not the people who traveled west, but the people who waited for word from them in the east.
Mail would travel slowly in the old west, and sometimes it would take weeks for a letter to get from California or Washington to people back east. Not true for me. I was able to follow the path and the time of her plane from take off to landing. I knew what altitude she was flying at, how fast she was traveling (an average speed of a little over 480 miles an hour.) The only thing I was not sure of is when she used the bathroom. I also knew what the weather was like at the airport in Seattle (thanks to a weather camera that updated every 3 minutes or so.) I knew when her daughter would be picking her up at the airport (Her daughter called me on a cell phone to ask when Lisa was landing.) What if the Pioneers had cell phones but still needed to travel by wagon train. Could you imagine the phone calls... "Yeah, I see some cactus, And a mountain." and a few days later.."Yeah, I see some cactus, and a mountain." And even later, "there's a lot of west in the west." It could get a little annoying after a while. Not that it isn't annoying enough now.
But I often think people don't realize exactly how godlike modern technology makes us. And how lost many of us would be if it were to suddenly disappear. Just a thought. Ciao for now.
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