Air Travel Is For The Birds

Dear Children:

There was a time when air travel was unusual, luxurious and expensive. It didn’t take long for it to become commonplace, cheap and painful. Take this morning, for instance.

We arose early in west suburban Boston. That part was okay. We were off to Logan Airport at the stroke of ten for a noon flight. In that time the car could have gotten us 120 miles down the road through fens and forests, history and myth, budding trees and melting snow; 18 wheelers and McDonalds by the score.

Instead there was the TSA assiduously guarding against the 4.5 oz toothpaste tube and ferrous metal. Don’t misunderstand: Nobody wants a hijacked aircraft used as a weapon against iconic buildings or the power grid. Its just that our sense of diligent fairness requires granny to get out of her wheelchair to be wanded, babies to have boarding passes and a suspension (however briefly) of our right to free speech. A mindless devotion to specific rule plays proxy for safety. Yet, we endure it for the greater good even though we know that determined criminals will merely bypass a hardened target for a soft one.

Airports, like shopping districts throughout the world, all look alike. They have the same Sunglasses Hut, the same newsstands, the same over-priced candy, the same stainless steel walls and the same hands-free toilets and sinks. If getting through customs or past the TSA weren’t enough, the glassy far-away stare on most folks is fashioned from pervasive numb and number sameness.

No wonder our minds, if not rotted by television, make great orchid-growing medium. In airports, one sees those portable DVD players, WiFi hotspots and CNN Lite everywhere. Forget sameness, we don’t actually leave home -- God forbid we should take delight in a stopover in Detroit.

Aircraft air is just this side of toxic – closer to ozone than oxygen. We all face forward just like old-timey prison dining rooms. Why is it that city buses can arrange seating for a varied view and airliners can’t? Airliners have a beggar-thy-neighbor system of comfort. The passenger in front tilts back his seat either shortening the one aft or producing a chain reaction of tilts into the empanage. Elbows are not safe from beverage-service carts nor are rest rooms the least bit gag free. What is that blue liquid?

So from Logan Airport we flew to Detroit to layover an hour or so and board a smaller plane destined Omaha. Omaha is not our destination. Our destination is three hours off by car. This is for the purpose of getting a cheaper fare. We save $200 each using this method. Because four Benjamins is nothing to sneeze at, we sneeze at a trip home in the dark.

Early in February it was less expensive to fly from home to Orlando thence New York and retrace the dog-leg than to go directly from home to New York round trip. A nodding acquaintance with geometry exposes that state of affairs for the fraud it is. It is not unlike our prehensile purchase on the idea of telephone long distance when we are all mostly equidistant from the satellite – the hypotenuse doesn’t matter.

Yet here we are at 30 thousand feet unable to see the ground and entertaining the belief that traveling 500 miles per hour is oh-so right. Maybe when this headache subsides and blood no longer pools in my rump, I’ll feel better. Who knows?

Much Love,

Poppy