Sunday, October 19, 2014

Photo-of-the-Week #181 - The World IS Flat, San Antonio, Texas, October 2014


I'm in downtown San Antonio, Texas about 10 or 11 floors over the famed River Walk in the center of downtown. The Alamo is nearby as are a number of other things I recall from my first time in San Antonio when I was newly enlisted in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War.

From my vantage point in the Grand Hyatt Hotel it appears that the world is truly flat, at least for as far as the eye can see to the horizon. I can't gauge the distance to the horizon, but my best guess on this very clear morning is that it's probably 75 miles to maybe 100 miles, or more, away. With the sun was behind me and being pretty early in the morning, I'd say this photo is looking in a westerly direction.

Much has changed here since the slightly more than eight months I was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base between mid-August 1969 and the end of April 1970. For example, the building I took this photo from didn't exist and wasn't even a blip on anyone's radar screen. It was actually completed in 2008.

The convention center next to the hotel, the two Marriott hotels across the street and most of the other structures in this area, including an interstate connecting highway weren't in the plans back then, either.

This land was actually part of the Hemisfair '68, a sanctioned World's Fair that closed less than a year before I arrived in San Antonio. Today, part of this land is occupied by the convention center. Another part of it is now HemisFair Park where the Tower of the Americas, at 750 feet tall, remains the tallest structure in San Antonio.

Times marches on, but from my vantage point, the world IS flat.

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