Flight
A Patriot Day Perspective
This photo
of me was taken in August of 2001 right before 911. I was
vacationing in Spain. The flight was fine, thank you.
I had hiked
about a mile through the foothills of the Sierra Morena with
friends, sat under the shade of 100-year old oak trees and
finished off three bottles of Chardonnay. That’s when
I realized that it was time to put an end to a popular misconception — a
myth if you will.
The mythconception
is this: Air travel broadens your perspective.
As the
Spanish sun beat down on my spacious forehead, it occurred
to me that air travel actually does the opposite. It limits
your perspective. Promoters of air travel assume that the
passive act of standing in line for hours, sleeping through
a high risk flight, and checking into an establishment with
the seal of western culture, are somehow meaningful experiences.
Your point of destination is promised to be chuck full of
life fulfillment. But meaningful experiences are much less
dependent on the venue than they are on the performance.
Believe me, you don’t need a $250 a night room and
a jetliner belching out a tank of fuel to broaden your brain.
This is
a difficult concept for many air travelers to grasp. In general,
they're so enamered with the air of sophistication that travel
supposedly brings, they forget that pollution is a long-term
concept that requires — you guessed it — an expanded
perspective. Pollution says, “consider the future.” Travel
says, “look at all the pretty scenery.”
Think on
this: The pollution from a single 747 take-off is similar
to setting
a gas station on fire and soaring on the thermals above
the smoke. This isn’t some harebrained analogy concocted
by a tree-hugger like Nathan Callahan. It comes from Dr.
Cladio Parazolli, a physicist for Boeing – the mother
of air travel manufacturers.
Cladio,
Schmadio, you say. What’s a little gas station fire
among friends? That hacking cough a human statistic suffers
because of the Freon, Methyl Bromide, Dichloromethane, Carbon
Tetrachloride, Benzene, Trichloroethylene, Toluene, Tetrachloroethene,
Ethylbenzene, Styrene, Formaldehyde, Acetaldehyde, Acrolein;
Acetone, Propinaldehyde, Crotonaldehyde, Isobutylaldehyde,
Methyl Ethyl Ketone, Vinyl Acetate, Heptane (my favorite),
Phenol, Phenanthrene, sulfuric acid, and the always reliable
carbon monoxide — all byproducts of airline fuel — is
a small consideration compared with flying to an exotic destination
far from home.
Besides,
you're in the air above the smoke for now. Air travel, though
it may be limiting from the perspective of human survival,
oxygenates the air of sophisticated.
Take this
for example: Repeat after me: “I got a flat tire.”
Pretty
dull, huh?
Now say, “I
got a flat tire in Istanbul.”
See the
difference?
It’s
the inflation of space that air travel provides — the
distance between you and the place you call home.
An exotic
locale carries social gravitas. If you get herpes in China,
it’s an adventure. If you get herpes in Bakersfield,
it’s a joke — in spite of the fact that folks
from Bakersfield are way more exotic than the Chinese. Have
you ever listened Buck Owens?
That’s
not to say that travel in general is bad for you, only that
it’s become an enormously overrated activity. It may
have broadened the mind when we lived in rural communities
and plowed fields. But that’s when in the course of
a day we saw our family and maybe a couple of neighbors,
tops. We all went to the same church, shopped at the same
store, and rose with the sun. Meeting people from a strange
land was a unique experience. Today, things are different.
My hometown
is Irvine, California. Some people think it’s not exactly
the most diverse place in the world. In fact, most people
think it’s the kind of place you would desperately
want to escape by igniting a service station full of fuel.
Not so. Five miles to my west — in Santa Ana — 70%
of the population considers Spanish their native tongue.
Another 5 miles away — in Westminster — lives
the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. Two
miles to the west — in Newport Beach — Saudi
princes cruise the bay. Three miles to the North — on
the Loma Ridge — mountain lions and other wildlife
eke out a meager existence. I can observe red-tailed hawks,
Mormons, Buddists, Humvees and baseball fields from my front
porch. My immediate neighbors are African, Russian, Vietnamese,
Armenian, Persian, Pakistani and Chinese. If I need exotic
experiences, I walk around the block.
It was
while walking in my neighborhood in the weeks following 911
that I noticed something comforting and pleasant, peaceful
and calm. It was the absence of burning gas stations flying
overhead. There was no air traffic.
One of
my neighbors noticed this too. She’s a hot-shot executive
with AOL. Before 911, she traveled to New York at least once
a month on business. On that day nearly two years ago, as
we looked up at the empty Orange County sky together, she
was grounded.
“Most
of my travel is unnecessary,” she confessed.
“Why
do you fly then?”
"It's
business as usual. Flight gives the appearance of working
. . and there’s always the hookers," she said.
For business
as usual, our federal government decided it was worth spending
billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the airlines and
keep up appearances. Now, the skies are starting to fill
again.
Recently,
one of my Chinese neighbors said she was flying to Hawaii. “It's
a great way to escape,” she said. I asked her who was
chasing her. She didn't get it. So I employed the revolutionary
rope a dope. I told her about Patriot
Day. You know, that's what our President has nicknamed
September 11th.
"Patriots
respect and honor their land," I said. “And every
American knows that flying disconnects you from your land.
As a matter of national interest,” I said looking off
into an imaginary airline-free future, “President Bush
has declared that air travel is unpatriotic.”
"’There's
a wonderful world at your feet. Talk to people. Broaden your
horizons. Stay home.’ Those are the words of our President," I
said.
I don't
know if she bought it, but you should.
By the
way, that photograph of me wasn’t taken in Spain. It
was taken in Irvine. I hiked about a mile through the foothills
with friends, sat under the shade of 100-year old oak trees
and finished off three bottles of Chardonnay. It beats torching
a gas station, any day.
— Nathan
Callahan, September 10, 2003
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