Flying is dull

I am starting to really dislike flying. This morning's flight will
be just over an hour, but the whole process, from leaving the house to
arriving at the other end will take three and a half hours. That
doesn't include hanging around for luggage at the other end, which I
don't do because I won't have any.

By contrast, the train takes seven hours... but there are a few
other factors which, for me, tip the balance in favour of staying on
the ground.

First, I like train stations. They seem to me to be places of
infinite promise, where one can step onto any platform and go anywhere
at a moment's notice. There is nothing regimented about a train
station, the whole place floats on a tide of people. At an airport, by
contrast, the moment you check-in you are processed, searched,
channeled, ticketed, watched, searched again, and finally let onto a
plane like it's some great privilege.

And planes don't even look like they should fly! Oh, intellectually
I know they work - I studied as an engineer, for goodness' sake, I know
lots of things about planes, including quite a lot about crack
propagation and fatigue failure (don't ask), so I know they work. But
as anyone who has watched a jumbo jet lumbering into the air will tell
you, it just ain't right.

Now I know, of course, that it's different for long flights. But for
the sort of short hops I'm always doing, flying is an extremely
frustrating form of transport, because the time is all chopped up.
First you have to travel out to the airport, then hang around for an
hour or so at the freakin' place, then climb onto a plane, then after
you've reached altitude you're allowed to get all the toys out again,
but by that time you're only forty minutes' away! It's all wasted time.
Whereas on the train, it may take twice as long, but once you're safely
esconced in your seat, that's you until you're at your destination. You
can work, rest or play the whole time. So much more civilized.

Then there's the environmental argument. Planes deliver NOx and all
its other evil exhaust stuff into the upper atmosphere, right where it
can do the most damage. Global warming kept me awake when I was twelve
years old. That was seventeen years ago, for crying out loud. I don't want to talk about it.

Finally, there's the fact that on a train you feel like you've travelled. You go through places.
You watch the countryside whipping by. People get on and off. On a
plane, the sense of movement is so distant that I always get the
distinct impression that we've just gone up and circled round for a bit
while people on the ground rearrange the furniture.

(This isn't what I wanted to write about at all. I was planning a
long rant about capitalism and its nature as an inherently unstable
system, but I appear to have got distracted)

And then, of course, there's the travel horror stories, which mostly
seem to involve flying. My own best one was the time Ryanair cancelled
a flight back from Paris (or at least, from the distant provincial
airport that Ryanair laughingly call Paris) on a Sunday night at 3am,
and couldn't find a replacement until Thursday. I finally ended up at a
different airport, two buses and a train later, flying with someone
else, but it was an entertaining twenty four hours. (Actually, I've
just realized I can beat that with a story about trains from when I was
16 and traveling on my own through France, but that was through my own
idiocy so it doesn’t count). I'm sure people have better horror stories than that, though. Anyone care to share?

WOW! We just flew over an offshore wind farm! A neat little grid of
tiny wind turbines in the middle of the sea! I was peering out the
window, looking for oil rigs (I know they're around here somewhere),
when suddenly this wonder of modernity caught my ear! Eye, sorry.
Caught my eye. That is SO COOL. Stupid thing to get excited about, but
really, wow. Brilliant. I've seen plenty on land, but seeing them in
the middle of the ocean is really something else. I sincerely doubt
they'll ever pay back all the effort that went into putting them there,
but as a symbol of mankind looking for new wonders to create, that was
pretty powerful.