Why I hate travelling

May 1, 2006

It’s a terribly long story, but I was supposed to be back home from a quick weekend trip by Sunday afternoon. It didn’t happen. Not even close.

Long story short, I won’t be back at my desk today and won’t be able to post until tomorrow. I asked The Reaction’s Michael J.W. Stickings, who had some terrific guest posts on Saturday, to fill in for me again today, so check back throughout the day for his keen insights.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll be back to a normal posting schedule, bright and early, on Tuesday.

Me, too. Hate travel, that it.

I spent a long weekend in Seattle. Our train back last night was delayed 2-1/2 hours when it hit someone coming through the Portland area and again, in the middle of nowhere, for no apparent reason. I don’t know why they couldn’t have bussed us instead, but then that would be expecting rationality, etc., etc.

Welcome back when you get here.

  • Postcard to the traveling carpetbagger.
    I wish you were here today.
    An interesting day to post your slant on the Colbert “roasting” of the President over the weekend.
    MSM is panning, or ignoring what many of us are celebrating.
    The gutsy jester proclaiming that the emperor (and his court of journalistic toadies) wear no clothes. In the olden days, Stephan would have lost his head.
    The act “bombed” in the room but resounded in the hearts of those who look forward to regime change. …..but the ongoing story is how the media responded to and chooses to cover the event.

  • Typo (in #1): “that it” should have be “that is”

    Which gives me an opportunity to ask: why is Amtrak given the lowest priority of all train traffic. Box cars loaded with commerce go whizzing past Amtrak. Even empty trains go whizzing past Amtrak. Corporate interests, anyone?

    Which brings me back to your more general topic: why I hate traveling. I used to love flying planes, but over the years I’ve grown to hate it – seating arrangements designed to squeeze (literally) every last passenger into every last seat, outlandish prices for each piece of abominable food, etc. Just last week I read about a proposal to have passengers stand up, strapped to a sort of vertical surf board to get still more use of space. When will it occur to someone to simply cram us in, the way they packed the slaves in the hold of ships for their journey to the New World?

    I hadn’t flown at all since (coincidentally) Bush’s theft of the presidency from Gore. Took Amtrak for the few times I needed to get from here (Bellingham WA) to the SF Bay Area. It’s a very pretty ride, even with the many inconveniences, and the delays haven’t meant so much to me since I retired.

    Then, last Fall we decided to spend two weeks in Italy (Padua, Venice), and Amtrak doesn’t go there. I was truly devastated when I realized what deregulation has done to air travel (the seating and “food” mentioned above). At JFK they kept changing their mind about what gate we should leave from, or what terminal we should leave from. We ultimately spent three hours hauling our luggage back and forth every time the erratic sound system came back to life and ordered us to the next gate/terminal. Turned out the reason for the delay was a labor stoppage called by somebody. The trip home from JFK was no better: an unfilled flight was canceled, so we had to scramble for a replacement

    I don’t want to sound like a “commie” (eek!) but couldn’t the airlines do with a little federal competition, subsidized by the Federal general fund. All we’d have to do to accomplish a return to “flight as it used to be” is to convert a fraction of what we’re spending on Bush’s Iraq quagmire into comfortable and convenient public travel. Is that so outlandish and idea?

  • Response to Kali (#3):

    Sorry I missed that “roast” – didn’t even think to record it. Anyway, I didn’t keep up with news over my long weekend away, so I have nothing to say (for once).

    Also, I’d be willing to try to fill in today (in fact, I just saw an email from Steve, among a couple hundred others, asking me to submit a few items today, but my old connection with the CBR — the one I have used to compose these items in the past — doesn’t seem to be working (which is why I couldn’t edit my first post).

    All I can suggest is that we make this one item an “open discussion” – on any topic that occurs to us. Maybe after I’m awake for a while I can think of something to contribute.

  • Ed — If you want to watch Colbert at the WH correspondent’s dinner there are links in my post in the Sunday discussion group or Crooks and Liars also has it.

  • Thanks, marcus; I’ll check it out. With Michael J.W. Stickings now on the scene, my earlier proposal for an extended discussion group housed within this item is, of course, suspended.

    I do, however, want to re-mention something that’s been gnawing at me for some time, and about which I was thinking of writing an item for CBR today (together with data, charts, etc.). With all the immigration marches which continue apace around the the country, I have seen very little of a what seems to me a very simple proposal: namely, enforce the law.

    My proposal isn’t as exciting as the reich-wing’s – an elbow-to-elbow phalanx of federal troops and vigilantes along our borders, or an impossible to build/maintain fence. Nor is it as compassionate the left wing’s – simple admission to full citizenship of everyone who wants to come here. The only effect of increasing patrols of the border already has been to increase the death rate among the would-be immigrants (they have to attempt entry at more dangerous locations) and to prevent those who might have “crossed back”, as they did in the past, from risking the attempt to return to family and friends. The major effect of “compassionate acceptance” would be to double and re-double the numbers who arrive here, until we have “flattened” the wage-question (“how low can you go?”) to the lowest common denominator on both sides of the border.

    My proposal is that we FINE EMPLOYERS, $100 per day per “illegal” employee. Historically, whenever the labor market shrank, immigration simply ceased (even went into negative net-migration as people who came here returned to their home countries – see Historical Statistics of the U.S., all the way back into Colonial times). Immigrants aren’t stupid – they come when it’s worth their while to leave family/friends to seek income in America.

    Under the FINE-THE-EMPLOYER proposal we wouldn’t need extra troops or social workers, just accountants capable of determining which employers are lowering established wage standards through violation of the law. The fines would negate the advantage of breaking the law.

    The economics involved is elementary supply-demand. During WWII the federal government made extraordinary concessions to labor unions. When labor unions decreased the supply of labor (as the proposed fines on employers would do), they increased the value of labor (i.e., you had to pay people what they claimed they were worth). The result was a RISE IN LABOR COST – a rise which made possible the “Middle Class” boom of the 1950s, when one non-overtime salary, with liberal vacation, health and other benefits, could house, clothe, feed and even college-educate a family of four.

    As long as the federal government (Democratic or Repugnant) continues to conspire with the purchasers of labor power to lower the value of labor, only the obscenely rich will become richer.

  • Re: kali #3. Yes, CB, I too called for a posting on the Colbert speech on the Sunday discussion yesterday. This was the most courageous journalistic moment in my memory–which goes back fairly far. To publicly call out not only Bush but McCain, the generals and the press so unsparingly and to their faces was a revelation. There was no place for them to hide. It will be amazing if Colbert ever works again in this punitive environment. It’s not surprising that the SCLM is ignoring it and talking up how adorable Bush was in his amusing speech. We can’t let the media refuse to cover this–as I have stressed in letters to the New York Times. We need to let the media outlets hear from us on this.

  • Hey Mr. and Mrs. CB,

    Hope all is well…I have images of the DHS or DOJ squirreling you away somewhere…I even googled Scooter Libby’s immortal missive to Judy Miller “Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already turning be turning…come back to work – and life…”

    I hope this is truly not the case – and I’m sure your readers agree with me on that.

    Looking forward to your return.

    Best,
    ricardo

  • Let me assure you, ricardo (and all), that CB is spending the day travelling – otherwise I’d have tried to reach him this morning.

    Colin, I couldn’t make your connection work for me, but I did get to see the Crooks and Liars postage-stamp sized view. Colbert was fantastic. His performance really does need to be shared as widely as possible, in spite of the corporate MSM attempt to crush it. Don’t these corporate types (I won’t call them “corporate folk”) realize that we all have access to the internet and its communication possibilities? (or at least we will have until Gates and Beijing have their way with us).

  • I dont have travelling. Travel is an integral part of my life since I live in DC and my boyfriend lives in NYC. So we simply have to do it. What I do hate is Amtrak. I HATE HATE HATE it! There is nothing worse that this disfunctional organization. Ok, I took a train last night from NYC back to DC. The train was delayed… by 1hour 15 min. For the first hour all they were telling us is that the train is in that mysterious place called Sunny Side Yard. Don’t be fooled by the name. If your train is at the Sunny Side Yard, find a seat inside Penn Station and make yourself comfortable since you are in for a long wait… and they would not give you any estimate as to when the train might get to Penn Station. Ok, what a shocker… Amtrak is late! Its predictably late… its always late and they dont even care! But on top of things, it was freezing on the train last night… I swear it was no more than 60F… when I asked the conductor if it was possible to turn AC down, he looked at me like I was the biggest annoyance in his life and said: “There is nothing I can do about it, the AC controls are on the OUTSIDE of the train”. Can you imagine that????? I was trying to picture the genius who was disigning the train and the thought process: “Ok, now I have to put these AC controls somewhere… where should I put them? Of course on the outside of the train! Because why would anyone ever want to change the temperature inside the train while actually being inside the train…” Seriously, Amtrak is not just run by idiots… they also hire morons to design the trains. Way to go!

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