It’s next to impossible to wrap your mind around the many changes right here in our own country during the past 200-plus years. This was foremost in our mind a few days ago when we heard Boeing’s announcement that they now have the concept design for a hypersonic plane which will travel five times the speed of sound at 4,000 miles per hour. Boeing shared their news with others at the American Institute of Aeronautics Aviation Conference in Atlanta, and promised that they’ll unveil their design at an air show later this month.

Of course, we won’t be able to hop aboard in the next few years; they estimate it will be 20 to 30 years “before customers are ready’’ for this type of air travel, but when he time is right, passengers will be able to fly from New York to London in two hours, cross the Indian ocean in three hours, and reach Australia from Europe in five hours. Mind-boggling!

In our lifetime, we’re still trying to adjust to the fact that in only three hours, you can travel via plane from Maine to Florida, or be in California in less than six hours. We can’t help but wonder what our ancestors who traveled west via Conestoga wagon in the late 1700s and early 1800s would think. It routinely took five weeks just to get to Minnesota, and the trip from Independence, Missouri to Oregon could take anywhere from four to six months. What would they have thought about getting to their destination the same day, avoiding wind storms, waist-high snow and below freezing temperatures, Indian attacks, and food and water shortages?How wonderful it must have seemed when railroads made it possible to cut down on travel time from the east coast to the shores of the Pacific.Even though the rails didn’t go everywhere, they made a huge difference, not only in saving time, but in making the trip a lot more comfortable.

Our nation’s transportation system is only one of the changes we’ve witnessed in our lifetime, and there are literally hundreds of others impacting our everyday lives. Hardly a week goes by but what we learn of yet another invention or improvement designed to make our lives a little bit better.We don’t expect to be around to make the two-hour trip to London, but many of you will be. Morning coffee break in New York, lunch in London. How can you beat it?