AN ODE TO MODERN TRAVEL

ASTONISHING, IS IT NOT, that it is possible to travel over six thousand miles in just over two weeks and have about ten days to spend with friends in two beautiful parts of North America, British Columbia and Oregon? Three days or so by car and, returning, one day by plane. I shudder to think of my carbon foot print (about 2,600 pounds of CO2 for the car and 1300 pounds for the air travel).

Despite the cost to the environment, there is a lot to be said for going by road. For a start, one gets to understand HOW BIG are the United States. There are greater distances across land masses, of course (try Paris to Peking), nevertheless the US is VAST. Six hours in a plane at 37,000 feet can give little idea of this. Next, one realizes how richly endowed is the land one traverses...vast cropland and grazing land, oil wells, coal mines, and wind-farms are passed by. Another advantage is the opportunity to stop off at historic places to get some sense of how Europeans encroached the land, numerous as the stars in the sky, advancing relentlessly westwards.
I got to see the faces of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Jefferson carved into the side of Mt. Rushmore and the hugely more massive ongoing work of carving the Crazy Horse Memorial. This had me thinking more about the Indian wars than the pioneers, though they are inextricably intertwined. It was natural to stop by the Battle of the Little Big Horn Memorial (Custer's Last Stand) just a mile or two off I90, passing through Montana. Finally, at gas stations and stores along the way, one gets to meet local folk eager to know from where you come and where you are going, and to tell you about their place.

Apart from the relative brevity, there is not much to be said for air travel. As a one-time private pilot of gliders and small planes with the privilege of a thousand or so hours in the sky in such, I confess to detesting commercial flying. The flight is not so bad (time to read and sleep) but...the airports and the "security"!!! Rarely is the walk to or between connections short or convenient (beware of Philadelphia, surely one of the the worst for finding connections). Then there is 'Security'...having traversed airports in other countries, this seems to me be overdone or even absurd. On their occasional tests of this system, the FBI reportedly get a high proportion of contraband items such as hand guns past inspections. At any moment, in the US, there are 250,000 folk in the air aboard some 5,100 airplanes. Per day, that is a lot of folk passing through security, removing their shoes, belts, and what not. One morning last year, at Denver International, I lined up for more than half an hour in a queue snaking this way and that before temporarily discarding belt, shoes, hat and coat. On the upside, this provides employment for many folk.

Going out to the airport by bus, I was stuck by the vast amount of land dedicated to airports, necessitated by the increasing length of runways in several directions and also occasioned by the need for supporting services. To tell the truth, I have began to feel a certain sense of absurdity with this business of air travel. For example, at Phoenix Airport last Tuesday, the pilot informed us that, by a narrow moment at push back, we had lost our slot in the takeoff queue and had been demoted to number 20 and might have to wait a further half hour to take off. Luckily, ground traffic control figured a way around this. So many potential bottlenecks on so much ground!

My mind went to my last Very Fast Train trip from Paris to Marseilles. After validating my ticket, I walked down the platform, stepped onto the train, stowed my baggage, and found my seat. To the minute, the train glided out of the station and, speeding at almost 170 mph and stopping at important towns along the way, arriving some three or so hours later. What, no 'security'! No, and excellent food service, cell phone use, Internet aboard...and, so quiet and restful. Starting and stopping seem so much safer and less dramatic on a train compared with taking off and landing on a plane. No danger, either, of the locomotive's engines being stopped by digesting large birds.

I suppose we have been as much in love with air travel as with car travel. If there are future generations who have not descended into ignorance and savagery, they might well wonder at the absurdity of our travel arrangements based on cheap oil. Cars and trucks need roads and planes need airports. In the US, paved main roads cover an area the size of Kansas and who knows how much farm land and marsh land have been claimed for airports.

Maybe the day will come when travel over land will be limited to trains. I hope so, and I hope that President Obama will take the first steps to secure this. Air travel over oceans is amazingly convenient but I expect it will be replaced by cruise ships for most of us. Air travel may have had its day but what a blast it was for a while. It was a triumph of romance and adventure over economics (only rarely are airlines actually profitable) and for a while, it shrank the world.