A week ago, we traveled all day from Seattle to Appleton, a distance in miles of 1938. Google Maps says that we could walk the distance in 626 hours. We didn't even try that. We got a ride from our motel at 8:40 and just about 14 hours later, we were in our motel in Appleton. We were gone about two weeks and paid for the room for one night, which we figured was cheaper than parking at the airport while at the same time, giving us a room close by to sleep in before the drive home. That motel, the Appleton Comfort Suites, does not charge for parking, just for a room.
Whether such travel is by car, plane, bus or other means, it feels to me like entering a special capsule for a while. The Seattle motel van, walking through the Seattle airport, boarding the plane, walking into the Minneapolis airport, walking around until the next flight, boarding a 2nd plane, landing in Appleton, getting our luggage at the baggage claim, calling for a ride to the Comfort Suites, getting into our motel room - all of that is one steady experience of traveling from one big city to a smaller one, one unit of steady, focused transport. That whole time, we were focused on our trip.
We could have used an airport closer to our home than Appleton but the only flights to them required leaving Seattle at midnight, disrupting the whole trip. We have never had to travel for more than 24 straight hours but such a time requirement is certainly possible. What was probably our longest continuous trip was central Wisconsin to Los Angeles, to Sydney, Australia. The last flight by itself was about 15 hours but you know how it is, once you get used to tensing your muscles, reading, snacking and being part of the trip, it is not too bad. The flight out of LA was delayed and didn't take off until about 1:30 AM (or 3:30 AM by the clock used to get started).
We keep our whining and bad-mouthing to ourselves. We realize something like 200,000 people have signed up for a one-way trip to Mars. We aren't interested but respect the hardy pioneers willing to make such a journey. We visited a ship in New Zealand where we stood in a small, dark room below decks where 40 people (men, women and children) would have lived together for two months to get from London to New Zealand. The wind patterns make it necessary to sail from London to Rio in Brazil before starting east to New Zealand. We talked with a woman in Hawaii who had been part of an experimental raft ride from Tahiti to Hawaii, research to see if Hawaii might have been settled by such a journey, a distance of 2626 miles. The Pacific Islanders used rafts with little huts to protect themselves while carrying a few live pigs and dogs. Unmatched sailors and explorers. Her experiment had a rough time finding a navigator who could guide the trip using only the stars, like the originals did.
If you are interested in long journeys, take a look at "Death Comes to the Archbishop" by Willa Cather. The new archbishop of the New Mexico territory, 1850, is called to Rome: a long mule ride from New Mexico to St. Louis, a train ride to New York, a ship to Rome, several months to attend a meeting. Of course, equally long getting home.
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