Trains and planes

A thousand miles seems pretty far
But they've got planes and trains and cars.

--Plain White T's, "Hey There Delilah"

I leave a week from Thursday for Rome.  It will be a short, one-week trip.  Why not longer?  A question I now ask myself.

But although I'll actually have only 3½ days in Rome itself, plus a two-day side trip to Levanto and Florence, as I discussed in an earlier post -- and will be back in Seattle before I have a chance to become fully acclimated to "Central Europe Summer Time"-- I couldn't feel more excited. 

Why?  Partly because 5½ days in Italy is better than two weeks in most parts of the world, even including Tulsa, Oklahoma.  But also because -- as I realize as I ponder the question -- I simply like the mechanics of travel.

I like airports.  Not so much TSA lines, although Pre-Check removes most of their sting.  But I like the atmosphere, the excited travelers, the constant departures to places to which I've never yet been, and to other places that I've visited and loved. 

I like airplanes.  Although the airlines seem determined to do everything possible to make plane travel unpleasant, I remain enthused.  I'm too short and skinny to be bothered (yet) by decreasing knee space.  I miss the meals on domestic flights, but the food on international flights remains decent or better -- and part of the fun of meals is to interrupt the monotony of sitting in one place.  But I also love, to some extent, that very same monotony.  A book to read; an old classic movie to watch or a new movie I'm too lazy to see in a theater.  Music on my iPhone -- when else but on long flights do I listen repeatedly to the "Goldberg Variations"?!

Once I arrive, I love train travel.  I've written on this blog repeatedly about the joys of Amtrak's long haul trains.  Train travel is much faster in Europe, so one rarely lingers for hours these days in an overnight "Wagons Lits" accommodation.  But their fast trains are very comfortable, and the scenery zooming past your window is great.  I'll be taking a 4½ hour high speed train from Rome to Levanto (on the Ligurian coast between Pisa and Genoa), and a 1½ hour high speed train from Florence to Rome. 

"Planes and trains and cars."  Cars aren't my favorite way to travel, but a rental car picked up at the airport or at the end of a railway journey and used for visiting small towns in the region affords access to certain areas that would be unattainable otherwise.  Especially when many countries have cut back their rail service to many small towns off the main lines.  No car rental this time, but I'll be renting a car a couple of weeks later to reach my sister's house, some three hours from Sun Valley airport.

City buses and subways?  Absolutely.  Figuring out their routes is one of the great joys of visiting a large city.  Note all my posts about maneuvering through subway systems, including my 2009 review of Lowboy, a novel about a schizophrenic teenager who lived in the New York subway!¹

Even long-distance buses can be fun.  When I was a college student, I frequently rode the Greyhound between school in California and home in Washington state.  Bus rides were associated in my mind with "finals are over!"  Since those days, I've read an essay that  David Sedaris wrote a couple of decades ago about a bus ride from hell that he endured in Middle America.²  Sedaris's vivid powers of description, although funny, do make me a little nervous about venturing again to "leave the driving to us," but I've also heard people claim that the buses have become much more enjoyable in recent years.

What I'm saying is that yes, even were I going to Tulsa for a week, I'd probably be looking forward to the trip, just because -- hey! -- travel is travel.  Out of the house and into the world!  Maybe for an introvert, travel is a substitute for long, convivial conversations, night after night, at the neighborhood tavern.  Who knows?  The heart has its reasons of which one's reason knows not, and even if reason knows it isn't talking.  To me, at least. 

So, as I say, I'm off to Rome.  A week in Rome would be something I'd anticipate even if I were being "teleported" there electronically in a nanosecond, using some quirk of quantum physics.  But combined with the blessed "mechanics" of travel? 

Yes!  Only 205 hours until take-off, bro!
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¹ John Wray, Lowboy (2009)
²David Sedaris, Naked, "c.o.g." (1997)