Areas of Unrest

22 December 1999 - A Transport of Delight

QOTD: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." - Horace Mann

Reading: Michael Lewis, The New New Thing

Listening to: Forbidden Broadway

I finally got my car back Monday morning. It was actually ready Friday but I didn't have time to pick it up before going to the airport. Anyway, it is back and looks great, but this whole business is a fair excuse for me to talk about transportation in general.

My preferred mode of transportation is shank's mare, but that isn't exactly practical much of the time. There are two types of places to live within walking distance of where I work, for example - overpriced or scary. Come to think of it, even the scary places are pretty overpriced. And, of course, one often needs to travel further faster. Still, given the time, walking is unmarred pleasure. When I was in grad school in Berkeley, I used to search out the best views for my walk to and from campus - past the Normandy Village to look at the gargoyles or over Holy Hill (by the Pacific Divinity School) to watch the sunset. I have favorite walking routes for after work and for weekends and I find that I feel more connected to my neighborhood as a result.

A bicycle extends the range a bit but also has more downsides than walking. For one thing, Los Angeles drivers are incapable of seeing bicyclists. There are times that I would like to become invisible, but maneuvering around several tons of speeding metal doesn't qualify. Wearing glasses also creates a challenge when bicycling as glasses are prone to fogging up when I sweat. Not to mention the effects of serious weather. All in all, that leaves bikes a mode of transport that I prefer for day excursions on vacations, instead of on a day to day basis.

For efficiently traveling long distances, airplanes are pretty much the only option. Given how scared I am of so many things, I consider it strange that I'm not a fearful flyer. In fact, I am one of the very few people in the world who actually likes turbulence, largely because it makes me feel more like I'm really going somewhere. There are really just a couple of things that annoy me about flying. Airplane seats, for example. It isn't just that they're narrow and the rows are too close together, but they also always manage to have the headrest bulge in a way that is sure to provide me with a stiff neck and the thin backs give free rein to the annoying kicking children who so often seem to be seated behind me. The other thing that I dislike is having to get to and from airports. The only U.S. airport that provides a truly pleasant transportation option is Logan in Boston, from which one can take a boat across the bay to Rowe's Wharf. And, even there, you have to first take a bus to the boat. A couple of cities provide reasonable options to downtown, with the el in Chicago and MARTA in Atlanta stopping right inside the terminal (as does the tube at Heathrow in London, lest this be accused of being too U.S. centric). But most of the time one is stuck on serpentine access roads with contradictory signs and manic taxi drivers cutting you off at every turn.

The biggest problem with planes is that they're too fast. You can't beat that if you have to get somewhere, but you also lose any sense of distance. Given the time, trains and ships both provide the perfect pace. Like Paul Theroux, I've never heard a train whistle without wanting to be on board. I started with childhood trips into the city on the Long Island Railroad (in the days of double decker cars!) and moved on to Amtrak from Boston to New York when I was in college. Since then, I've taken trains on six continents - and there aren't any trains to ride in the Antarctic or I would have done that too. Aside from traveling at the right pace, trains are usually comfortable. You can get up and walk around and chat in the lounge car over a drink. My most recent rail excursion was from Fairbanks to Anchorage, Alaska in September and I even saw a bear while eating lunch.

As for ships, they're just so astonishingly civilized. But the trend these days is to the megaships, ocean liners that are bigger than the Titanic herself. Not for me those floating resort hotels. Nay, I will take to the freighters, passing the days away on mail ships and supply vessels, off to the more remote corners of the world.

Alas, routing considerations limit the utility of trains and ships in day to day life. And so we come to busses, trucks and automobiles. I have little interest in trucks, really, beyond my annoyance at the belches of diesel smoke they spew at me. However, there are other parts of the world where they play a different role and hitching rides from truckers is about all you can do to get around.

The bus is a particular form of torture. Local ones are merely noisy and slow. Long distance ones get you where you're going but often drop you in marginal neighborhoods at the end. At least one is likely to survive most American bus trips. Hours of jolting over Third World roads are far scarier, even if you pay for the luxury bus lines. (Luxury is defined as not having to share a seat with goats or chickens, by the way.) The scariest bus rides I've experienced were in India, but most transport there is at least mildly scary and the busses weren't necessarily worse than autorickshaws even if they were somewhat less reliable than the occasional donkey cart I resorted to. (Incidentally, donkey carts are quite common in Southern Africa, as well, and in Namibia are referred to as "the Kalahari Ferrari.") When the driver is careening wildly straight down the middle of the road, it is not at all reassuring to realize his religious tenets include reincarnation, making him far less concerned about death than you are. Trains, when available, are a far better option.

I've used busses on a regular basis in some places (e.g. London) but the Los Angeles bus system is predicated on the dubious assumption that people want to go downtown. And so the only option is a car. Which would be all well and good if I were the only person who had one. Instead, I have to deal with the interesting fact that every single person in the entire city knows when I am running late and crowds onto the 405 in order to make me later. Driving in traffic is not fun and don't let anybody say otherwise.

I should also add that I am a victim of a family curse when it comes to driving. My father had a driver's license but, as far as I know, he got behind the wheel of a car exactly once after he married my mother. That once was when they replaced their 1954 Plymouth BelAir with a 1966 Dodge Dart and he could no longer use the "but the Plymouth won't start for me" excuse that kept my mother as chauffeur. Mom wasn't brave enough to go out with him in the new car so one of the neighbors was recruited. Under careful direction, Dad backed out of the driveway, drove the car around the block, pulled back into the driveway and never drove again. Neither my brother nor I realized the impact of this, but both of us entered into long relationships with non-drivers. Ramona did get her license after she married Elliot, but Robert insists that at his age he isn't going to ever learn.

On an entirely different subject, I am amazed at this whole hysteria over the full moon. According to the Naval Observatory, the difference in visual magnitude due to the perihelon is insignificant (-12.9 vs. the more usual -12.6, with more negative numbers being brighter. The sun has a visual magnitude of about -20 if I recall correctly and the scale is logarithmic, so the sun is something like 200 times brighter than the moon. But don't quote me on that.). Penny actually called me to tell me to go out and look at the moon and, frankly, it just looked like a perfectly normal full moon to me. But people seem to want to believe.