Good things happen when you ask

Although I have been looking forward to seeing friends and family, I certainly was not looking to the long flight home; so, I planned on sleeping all the way to Atlanta. I slept for a short while, then got woken up by the frigid air blowing straight at me. After I thawed out the icicles out of my eyeballs and unclenched my teeth from being frozen, I asked the guy next to me if he would be so kind to close the source of the icy breeze pointing at me. I sort of chattered a thank you with my teeth.

Now, that I’ve broken the ice (uhh, no pun intended here), I began to make conversation. You know the usual. Where are you going? Visiting? Going on vacation? Work visit? Pleasure visit? The works. The guy is from Serbia. He’s flying to Belfast. Suddenly, my five-hour flight didn’t seem so bad. After Atlanta, he has an 11-hour flight to Zurich, then more air travel to Belgrade. Whew!!! And he can’t sleep in airplanes. Sheesh! He’s going to be exhausted.

So, I asked him what he does. He said he’s a geodetic engineer. The word ‘geodetic’ was fascinating in itself, but I had no clue what that even means or what he does, exactly. So, I asked him to explain. Let’s say someone wants a new road somewhere. He surveys the land at the proposed site for the planned road and takes measurements. He determines how the road should lay, how high or how low builders should dig, takes the angles of the land into account, and . . . I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s about as much as my brain absorbed. I was fascinated by this so I asked how these data are gathered. He showed me pictures, explained in simple terms (so I can understand it) how the instrument works (something about measuring angles, depth, vertical and horizontal lines), how it’s used (not that I will ever be able to operate it if one is thrust in my lap and my life depended on it), how the data is translated into hard copy format(something about a CAD program), then printed so it is usable by whoever asked for the survey.

See, good things happen when you ask. I asked and now, I’m going to see roads with new eyes. I am perpetually fascinated by how much each of us contributes to our world. I’m about to make another cross-country drive with Hannah. All those roads . . . I never fully thought of how those went in. I’ve seen the surveyors on the roads before. . . Of course, it’s not just roads that geodetic engineers become involved in. I’m just awed by it all. Just the word ‘geodetic’ in itself is fascinating.