Mowing the Big Lawn

To five guys that work at DFW International Airport, it's just another day on the job. Maybe! The one thing that is so different about this job is that like at home, the grass grows daily. And this lawn is the size of the island of Manhattan in New York.

With seven (7) active runways, miles of taxiways and more miles of access roads to things like fuel storage tank farms, or ILS farm for landing etc.,etc., the mower gang has 747s and A-380 coming in over their heads as they work. Some as close as 50-75 feet above their heads.

Airplane geeks, like me an thousands of others, love to get as close to the action as possible. Especially if you are a photographer. Just look at the people that hold on to the fence but still get jet blasted away on a little island beach community known at St. Maho Beach on the Dutch side of Saint Martin where the big planes land packed with vacationers coming to the Caribbean island.

I would take DFW any day of the year.

Cutting the grass

A new marker at Founder's Plaza

Yes, just cutting the ole lawn!

Slow Day at DFW

Say what you will, but Boeing 747s are still my most favorite plane and I hate to see airlines retiring them by fleet numbers. Thank goodness for air cargo carriers.

China Air Cargo

One of the regular cargo carriers at DFW

Beautiful Plane

Interesting Flower Pot

This Chic-fil-A is only a couple of blocks from the Dallas Arboretum. I wonder if that had any cowing  to have this handsome flower pot looking at customers that use the drive-thru to place their orders?

The Man In The Center of Air

Do you see the man working on the tower? He has a safety harness but that's it and below is open air all the way down to the ground.

Interesting Finale

Went exploring this afternoon. After getting gas, leaving the station and heading toward the main drag when an electric wheel chair appeared on the sidewalk catching my attention. It's driver was laying on the sidewalk. Almost immediately,  two women pulled up ahead of me and got to the old man. Others began to stop and with help there, I was satisfied that the old man was alive and had help that apparently knew who he was.

Had they not been there, my phone  was in my hand at the time to call the rescue squad. From there, it was on to the main drag and then down to the next light to turn right. It had occurred to me that  where the street ended--or in high Dallas tradition---what it became on the other side of a light and  intersection was unknown to me. Sometimes  one street can have three, sometimes four, names. It's the craziest thing. Why they don't just let a main drag keep its name from one end to the other has no answer.

Seeing new things and being taken back by the development, still, my curious nature kept me going and gawking at the new sights. Then, things began to look familiar but the road just kept going. And so did my car. Then, the realization hit me that the street name had made the switch and where the change occurred had been missed. At that point it was time to turn the car around and head back to see where the change had occurred. All-in-all, there were two turn arounds, one north and one west.

It was so nice weather-wise today, heading for the barn was delayed as long as possible. Finally, it was time to head inbound. Sure was nice, though.

This is across from University of Texas-Dallas. This was not here a year ago.

A good clean shot of a Vulture. The next picture is what he was really after.Also, you might have to enlarge this one manually. Thanks to Google, I might add.

All the ewe's have had they kids and were out for the first time that I have seen then. Long Horn Sheep.

Another Dallas Police Officer's End of Watch

This is really getting to be all to common. It was only a couple of months ago when I was photographing the memorial patrol car of the Richardson Police Officer killed while answering a call. Now, Dallas, has lost another officer doing the same thing.

He got up and went to work and on a dime, his life was ended for his watch that day.

This time, the memorial car was at the Northeast Patrol Division on Northwest Highway. Having seen the measures underway to protect the job place of work, the division basically has no parking for the public other than a couple or three spaces for visitors under normal circumstances. I parked on the east side of the armory and walked down to the station. There were 16 images that ran on the live news feed and rolled off this morning on the 48 hour cycle.

Since officer Santander's funeral is not until Monday, the memorials have built since the initial images were on the live news feed. I don't like to go back with more images when the kind people were gracious enough to run my images. There is only so much space for the whole world of events happening and I respect that aspect of submitting images, too.

However, I know that there are some of my readers that would like a follow up and I went out again this morning and shot a couple more images just to update the scope of how the community has turned out in support of our officers.

Here is what it looked like today.

The memorial for Officer Santander

The patrol car can hardly be seen.

Part II to Garland and Cowboys

As previously mentioned in our last post, the part of our trip before Heritage Events in downtown Garland, the Cowboys on Tour had been spotted in the parking lot of the Academy Sports store.

Here are those images.

What did we ever do before pop-outs in semi-trailers?

The Five Big Wins for the Cowboys

Had the weather been nicer, the future of football would have been trying out.

All set up for what its like to be auditioning for the Cowboys and the weather slammed them hard.