Lump in throat moment

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Originally uploaded by eqdynamics.

Spent a day visiting Virginia's Outer Banks among whose claims to fame is the site of the first English settlers to set foot on American soil and the site at Kittyhawk where the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight.

This visit was truly a "lump in the throat" moment for me. There's a good little museum dedicated to the achievement containing recreations of the Flyer and the earlier glider that proved their theories on 3-axis flight control. Most moving for me though was to walk along the field where the flights took place - the fourth and last of which over a distance of just 852 feet. Considering I was there thanks to a jet aircraft that had whisked usfrom Paris to New York (a distance of 3,000 or so miles) in about 7 hours and that we are only a little over 100 years from the Wright Brothers first success it's hard not to think about the rate of technological progress over the past century - and speculate on what may come over the next.

Personally, I hope to stay around to see as much of it as I can.