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Why I'd rather drive than fly
I love airplanes. But I hate air travel. When I flew to North Carolina a few weeks ago, the flight was less than two hours, but the actual trip took more than eight. It began with a 4:30 a.m. cab ride to the purgatory that is Pearson Airport, where I joined a 2-1/2-hour customs lineup.
I barely made my flight, even though I arrived more than three hours early. The delays continued down in North Carolina. It took half an hour for the luggage to emerge. It took Hertz 90 minutes to find my car. A jet airliner can cruise at 800 km/h, but its speed is nullified by the snails’ pace of everything associated with it.
So you’ll understand why I prefer to drive. Consider my recent trip to Manhattan with my wife and two of our best friends. Air Canada wanted $745.26 per person, and we would have to take cabs to and from the airport on both ends, so the total cost would be about $3,400 for two couples. (We could probably have found better fares, but we were still looking at more than $2,000 for the four of us, including cabs.)
Then there was the scheduling headaches – arrive at the airport before dawn, pray your flight is on time, wait for your luggage, wait for a cab – the list went on. We decided to drive. A road trip sounded like fun, and I had the perfect vehicle – a Lexus hybrid SUV test car with satellite radio.
We left on a Monday morning at 11 a.m. – unlike air travel, the schedule was up to us, and we could carry as many bags as we wanted. (Our only limit was the size of the trunk.) New York was 800 kilometres away. We could do it in a single day, but we decided to take it easy, cruising through small towns and looking at the sights. We spent a night in Binghamton, N.Y., and were in Manhattan by 2 the next afternoon.
By the time we got back to Toronto, we had used about $180 worth of gas for the entire journey (both ways, including numerous side trips). Our total trip cost for four people, including tolls, gas and hotels on the road, came to just more than $800 – about $200 each.
But the cash savings were only part of the benefit. We had been free to come and go on our own schedule. We didn’t have to pay $5 for an airline snack, pare down our luggage or fill out customs forms while we stood in a two-hour lineup.
Just last month, I read the obituary of David E. Davis, founder of Car and Driver magazine and one of my favourite car writers of all time. Although I had read most of his work, the obituary told me something I didn’t know – unless a trip was more than 1,000 miles, David E. refused to fly. Only beyond that distance, he argued, could an airplane’s speed overcome the hellish layers of bureaucracy that came with it – like airport transportation, security lineups and air traffic delays.
David E. knew what he was talking about. If there’s an ocean or a continent to cross, I’ll put up with the airlines. For everything else, give me a car and a good travelling companion. As someone once said: airplanes are the fastest way to travel, but only if you have the time.
The rest of the story
2025 Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4 / 2023 Mercedes EQE 350 4Matic
To the airport to pick up visitors. :-)
To the airport to pick up visitors.
I have never and would never do that to a friend or relative. If I am not flying into a local airport I rent a car. To me it is common courtesy. Even local I usually rent a car. I know people that drive up to LA airport to pick up family. I would not drive up to the LA airport to pick up anyone except maybe my mom or dad. I would rather give them the extra to fly into the San Diego Commuter terminal. My time is too valuable to me to fight that LA ignorance.
Hitting the Target this morning was just like those bush rats going into Fred Meyer in Anchorage after living in the bush for six months. Even if we only spent $1. And we got some good Mexican food.
Going to do it again in a week, and bring some insulation home on the return leg.
Then we're going to do a real road trip.
If it dies, it dies. Either fix it and keep going or buy a beater Caravan somewhere.
It was about 1965. My wife and I were taking our first long road trip in our new Toyota Land Cruiser. Well the POC died in Bakersfield CA. It only had about 6000 miles on it and the fiber timing gear went out. The Toyota dealer had us tow it to a shop in Bakersfield. We were stuck there 4 days of our weeks vacation. Finally they got the part to the shop and we were back on the road. That was the first of 3 times that gear went out. The next two it was past the 12k mile warranty. Burnt valves and timing gears made for some unhappy road trips with that vehicle. I would not consider a Toyota for decades. Can't say I am tickled with this Sequoia. It is a nice vehicle out on the highway. Probably continue using just for road trips till I find the exact diesel SUV I really want.
Longest I've ever been stranded was overnight in Haines Jct. Yukon. The young mechanic thought the transmission was shot. The older mechanic showed up later and fiddled around and slept on it and figured out the low engine compression wasn't creating enough vacuum to shift the gears. I forget what he did but he got us on the road the next morning. The motel bill was more than the repair. :-)
That's the kind of stuff you remember 30 years later, not the pleasant but uneventful drive through some hollow. Although Haines Jct. is always a lot cooler than Bakersfield. :-)
Yes it was summer and we were headed up into the Sierras for the week cut short by that stinking Toyota. My only time in Haines was 1974. Bought a new Dodge Van in Seattle and put it on the ferry to Haines. It was nothing but sunshine the whole trip. A very, very rare occurrence. I met 3 nurses headed to Anchorage and we had a grand time on that trip. 37 years in Alaska and my only time to Ketchikan, Juneau, Petersburg and Haines.
Steve - what's your airport? Marquette or some such place?
Another beautiful day at the beach today. Being the start of the weekend we had to fight the crowds of maybe 15 or 20 people as we took the long walk to town for lunch.
I always pooh-poohed the Midwest as a place to live in my younger days - no mountains you know. Turns out to be quite the fun spot. And there's even some topography around. Wildlife count this week is one eagle, four turkey vultures, hummers, gulls and miscellaneous deer (although we've missed the 5 fawns running around). The foxes are back under the deck around the corner but they are elusive too, and my neighbor got chased off her deck last night by a skunk. Plus there was a black bear behind the restaurant in the dumpster tonight but he had bolted before we had finished the fresh perch.
Critters are fun but we have our priorities and it's Friday fish night all over up here. The bears can wait.
We did it! We made it! We arrived back in New York, our starting point, on 5 January 2002, just 1101 days since we departed on our round-the-world, Guinness World Record journey -- Paige’s first World Record, Jim’s third Guinness World Record. Passing through 116 countries, we covered more than 245,000 kilometers during our travels, which began in Iceland way back on 1-1-1999. Our non-stop, self-contained, three-year trip in a one-of-a-kind Mercedes-Benz took us to six continents, where our goal was to explore as much of the world as possible at the turn of the millennium, to learn what people and countries were doing and to see how well they were doing it. We met extraordinary and ordinary people, drove through war zones, blizzards, deserts, jungles, faced epidemics, and tasted divine and sometimes horrible food, while covering vastly diverse landscapes, cultures, and societies. Along the way, we documented our experiences and discoveries with photography, video, audio, and written thoughts. So pick a date or a country and ride with us on our Millennium Adventure.
http://www.jimrogers.com/
There is a good write-up on the vehicle under the adventure. I was not that familiar with this guy until I read an article how he co-founded the Quantum fund with Soros. He left it a long time ago. One of the investment gurus.
Hopefully a guru who didn't cash in on bad mortgages, hedge funds, and shorting.
drove with one of my kids to their new job, 1100 miles.
in 2 weeks bringing one of my kids to school, another 1600 miles round trip.
The family and I have seen a bobcat, it was a small one inside of the Chiricahua National Monument in SE Arizona. Very cool ta see one of them. I'd love to see a bear of either coloring or a cougar out in the wild.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Somewhere, I have some photos that I took of a bobcat in Marin County, North of the Golden Gate Bridge in late June 1990. Judy and I did a lovely road trip up the coast from LA to SF and loved it.
Not sure that the bobcat was keen on my presence, I think it was planning dinner! Did not appreciate Australian tourists.
Cheers
Graham
My son just returned from the Philmont Scout Ranch in NM - he saw more bears than he cared to.
Hitting the road in an hour or so, just need to shut the computer down and toss the canoe on top of the car. Easy day today; going to head for Sudbury Ontario.
I know a guy up there whose house is a real sublime and ridiculous situation - even after allowing for the fact that he's next door to his in-laws. The house is right on this big beautiful lake. Unfortunately, directly behind the house - just across the street is a rail head that I can assure you gets used. A lot. At all hours.
Really nice people.
Didn't quite make it there, but we did fine considering the late start. And it's beautiful driving weather, and it's always nice not to have to do a shakedown of the tent and gear in the rain. It'll take a few days for us to get into the groove. (There is a railroad track next to the campground, but the owner assured us that they only had two trains a day :-)).
Highlight today were two groups of sandhill cranes (7 total) chowing down in cut hay fields. Guess they are heading south already.
Went for a couple hour paddle this afternoon on the Androscoggin River and saw osprey and a loon. And the loon finally called for us while loading the canoe back on the van. Fun, fun.
I am hoping to get going somewhere next week but it depends on what all the doctor says on Tuesday. Not being able to think more than a couple of weeks ahead bites the big one.
At least tomorrow I'm looking to take the boat up to the Mets game. Nice hour and a half or so trip from Jersey up the East River.
And then there's that wild ride to the doctor in NY on Tuesday. Yippee-i-o....
Off to hospital this morning to check out a tick bite on my wife's neck. Classic bullseye one. Otherwise Newfoundland has been just as wonderful as we remember it from 11 years ago. You would have enjoyed the trio we heard two nights ago at a Parks Canada "interpretive" evening Fezo. The visitor center maintenance guy was on accordian, the trail builder played guitar and sang (lots of songs by Roy Payne, "the goofy Newfy") and the campground security guard played ugly stick (he made me try it but I wasn't coordinated enough to do anything - it's rather like rubbing your stomach while patting your head.
my first Mets game was in 70 but I'd been a fan from the start. I was 11 when they played their first game. Got home from school and watched what remained of the first game.
I figured on the antibiotics. When I had one of those bites they put me on one for three weeks.
The Manhattan berg is south of where we were and a few kilometers off shore. Never saw it. The bergs we did see (50 plus) were chunks from it.
Don't know how to estimate the size too well. The biggest ones near where we could paddle "close" to them, were probably 30 feet high and maybe as big as 4,000 sq. ft. McMansion with attached garage (above water). The ones further offshore were six to ten times bigger maybe? I towed a 4' long narrow section near shore to the rocks, where it split easily with a couple of hits with my knife. Filled up the coolers. :-)
I'll try to upload a pic or two.
Fun day - went to a tapestry exhibit down a 40 km long road that was mostly gravel under construction. Returning, I had a flat but, just like 11 years ago up this way, didn't realize it until I had destroyed the tire. And then my jack didn't work, but a nice couple from Toronto emptied the trunk of their rental car and we used their scissor jack to the get spare on. Wound up buying a new tire for $160 at a NAPA in Plum Point. Nice mechanics and fast.
We did wind up missing the ferry so we decided to skip Labrador and head back East. The Toronto couple had met my brother that morning and finally got word to to my brother that we were running late to our meet up point (our cell isn't working up here, but my brother's sometimes does). Great Canadians, as usual.
link
The smaller one in the foreground is similar to the larger ones we paddled near.
Met this guy a few minutes ago:
Randy Hann
By the way, it looks like many places in Alaska. No trees.