Is Travel Worth the Stress, the Fear and the Disappearance of Carry-On Bags of Duty-Free Vodka?
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 08.15.06 | 7:30 AM ET
The answer to the question is yes, says the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Thomas Swick. His latest column is a typically insightful piece about flying in a world where large quantities of liquids are now banned on planes and security lines grow forever longer. “Flying has been the least enjoyable aspect of travel for quite some time,” he writes. “No one arriving at an airport these days quotes Robert Louis Stevenson: ‘For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.’ Not just because we don’t read Stevenson anymore, but because, very often, we’re not moving. We’re standing in line, trying to untie our shoes.”
He goes on:
Now, apparently, we’ll be standing in line, wondering whether our toothpaste is interacting in a colorful way with our shampoo in an overstuffed luggage hold. This is not a pleasant thought. Neither is the accompanying one, that we might never see our toothpaste or hair gelagain. But these trivial concerns shouldn’t keep us from seeing the Pillars of Hercules.
Snip.
Easy for people who run travel sections to say. For those who carry so much fear it muzzles their pleasure, the best thing is to stay home. Because if you go, even though the flight is short, you’ll be haunted the whole time by the prospect of the return.
For everyone else, the old truth still holds: a brave, undiscovered world awaits outside the arrivals hall.
We second the motion.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
