The Only Way to Fly is to Not

Trips to enjoy versus trips to endure

My hope when I retired is that I would never have to fly again. Without the constraints of limited vacation time, I could drive or take a train if I wanted to see the people I love who live all the way across the country. 

Between hitting the local festivals in Wyoming and seeing family back east, that was just not to be this summer. I just got back from upstate New York where I was with family celebrating my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Monday I fly out for a trip to the Washington DC area, rural Virginia, and Clemson, South Carolina, to visit family and friends.

In a perfect world, I might have done this as one big month-long loop, with a stop in Dayton, Ohio, along the way, but between dealing with divorce and finances and all those details of a life currently in upheaval, I couldn’t afford that much time away from home.

So, alas, flying was the only option. I keep saying I try to be open to the experience, but I have a hard time finding joy in either disassembling and reassembling myself in airport security or being jammed cheek by jowl into a pressurized tube. 

This was one of those planes that had a screen where you could watch the flight path and data, which I always find fascinating. I discovered a feature that showed snippets about the towns and other places we flew over. Populations, years founded, who they were named after. One after another, more quickly than I could have driven.

It was my connection to the ground, to the type of traveling I like to do. I watched it intently, but it was missing something. It was detached. I wasn’t there seeing the town hall or old Carnegie library, the diner where locals gather for coffee and breakfast. Had this summer been a little less hectic, I would rather have experienced these places with all my senses instead of reading factoids on a screen. 

For me, a 3-hour flight is to be endured, while a 3-day drive is to be enjoyed. By the time I got to Chicago, I was determined to organize my life a little better so I could keep wheels on the ground next time.

Fly United Airlines, and you’re more than likely going to end up in O’Hare, which I once considered the center of all misery. If I was going to have a problem, it was most likely going to happen in O’Hare. Invariably, I would arrive at the farthest end of one concourse with my connection at the farthest end of another. One night I ran that distance back and forth, trying to get a plane to Dayton, Ohio, and winding up on the only viable option going to Cincinnati instead. The only thing that kept me from sleeping on the airport floor that night was a wonderful older brother who drove all the way across the Ohio River late at night to retrieve me. It was well after midnight when we stopped at White Castle on the way home.

I’ve slept on the Denver Airport floor, and it’s tolerable. I was not liking the look of the floor in Chicago that night.

A shortcut between the B and C Concourses is what I term United’s Psychedelic Tunnel of Lights. Streaking neon, wavy multicolored walls, all choreographed to Rhapsody in Blue. Spend time on an extended hold with United, and you’ll never want to hear Gershwin again.

Over 30 years ago, I encountered this tunnel on my way back from a summer working in Alaska, where I had fallen in love with a handsome ski bum. Another young woman and I had shared an employee housing room with particle board walls. I slept in the top bunk. I’d barely heard a radio or seen a television for four months. 

I was straight off a red-eye flight from Anchorage, where I’d struck up a conversation with a big game hunter in the seat next to me. Sometime in the night, I woke to feel him gently tucking my blanket around me. He didn’t get handsy, so I dozed back off.

So I’m stumbling off a plane in O’Hare, dressed in the ‘90s hippie uniform of hiking boots and Levi’s jean shorts over polypro longjohns, in the tunnel of lights, staring bewildered, disoriented at the sensory overload. It was an abrupt and startling return to civilization.

The ski bum and I are sorting through the legalities now of going our separate ways. I’m no longer the starry-eyed, romantic 20-something I was then. I’m thinking I might apply for a summer job in Alaska, though. I wonder how Denali has changed. I know I have.

Will I fly if I go to Alaska? I don’t know. I don’t want to. I want to drive the Alcan Highway or go to Seattle and take the ferry. Visit a dear friend on the Olympic Peninsula on my way. On the ground or on the water. It’s the only way to travel. Let others take to the air.