Thursday, May 14, 2009

Travel Trauma


When fuel prices were high last year, I saw people actually curtailing their travel and plotting how to get more things done any time they pulled their vehicle out of their driveways. It was a good thing to see people making a conscious attempt to change their behavior regardless if it was to save money or save the earth.

My wife recently returned from a trip with her sister. She’s been back for a couple weeks now and she is now just starting to speak of a new sort of trauma that she calls Travelers Guilt. I knew immediately what she meant. Aside from constant cultural invasion to lands of which we have no business being in; there is all the expended fuel to take people from one place to another.

I don’t know how much fuel it takes to fly across the country, but considering you can take the amount of fuel and divide by the passengers, each passenger has a related fuel usage. Considering how many times I have flown across the country and across the Pacific I am probably responsible for one entire flight and the fuel it has burned. I have little to show for it. Sure maybe some photographs and memories, but in reality I should have stayed home and donated the money I spent to a worthy cause.

11 Comments:

Blogger Auntie said...

Sheesh is this "Thursday-Guilt-O-Rama" day or something?

5:49 AM  
Blogger Beth said...

Travel trauma is a new "guilt trip/concept" for me - but I'll add to the list.

6:50 AM  
Blogger JustRex said...

I'm not really planning on another trip, but I am looking forward to it with great interest. One more trip halfway across the country and back home. And I refuse to feel guilty about it at all. As for the things I have done earlier in my life, I have been places and done things and they make up who I am. If I hadn't done them I would now be someone else. Heck with that, dude. Like the man said "I am what I am and that's all what I am."

7:13 AM  
Blogger The Guy Who Writes This said...

Auntie, I just want people to think. I remember when I worked for a program that was grant funded. The State loved to call meetings every month and required people from all over the State to attend. Nothing was ever accomplished other that having agencies blow their own horns...month after month. I spoke to someone now working that grant and things haven't changed.

Beth, it's something to think about.

Darev, wasn't that Popeye that said that?

7:23 AM  
Blogger Uncle Walt said...

Actually, I think "unnecessary" travel is a good thing. Something to be proud of.

My theory is that all the modern "unnecessary" travel is a large part of why most people aren't xenophobes. It's easy to hate/fear another race/people, when you don't know them ... or at least one of them.

"Unnecessary" travel introduces you to people/lifestyles you wouldn't normally encounter. And the farther from home those travels take you, the more new people/lifestyles you encounter ... the less xenophobic you are likely to be.

Which makes you less likely to fall for the "all (X people) are evil and bad" paranoia some people try to sell us.

7:43 AM  
Blogger The Guy Who Writes This said...

Walt, if there were only a country filled with gay and lesbian migrant workers. I'd like to send Republicans and the Religious Right there to get over their xenophobia.

9:27 AM  
Blogger Uncle Walt said...

I don't think there are any gay/lesbian migrant workers. Not many designing jobs are migratory.

LOL


btw - I hate that new TV commercial with the don't say "that's so gay" message. Until the homosexuals "stole" it, "gay" referred to being in a rather good mood. So if we can now use "bad" as "good" ... why not "gay" as "bad"?

Damn the language police ... full speed ahead!

11:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll bet there's mass amounts of travel guilt floating around on those damn cruise ships..think of all the fuel those leviathans consume as they leave a carnage of chopped up baby whales and dolphins in their wakes all the while belching forth globe warming exhaust from their mammoth smoke stacks. Those things carry thousands of Californians on them which also means they got thousands of toilets on'em, too-so besides leaving a bloody swath of propellerchopped baby whale gore, fish and seabirds, there's also seaspanning turd slicks left behind wherever they go. I think perhaps the POA should look into aquiring the old gun batteries at Chinook and Ft. Stevens and start taking some shots across some bows to let'em know they aren't welcome here, by golly.

6:06 PM  
Blogger The Guy Who Writes This said...

Walt, How about changing the meaning to get over it.

Anon, I used to feel the same way, but I've since moved my position to live and let live. And I am thankful I am not met with hostility when I'm in a strange town.

5:14 AM  
Blogger Uncle Walt said...

My point exactly, Guy.

Words regularly change meaning. So it makes no sense for a group to try to lay claim to a word, and then try to prevent people from changing its meaning.

All the commercial is doing, is spreading awareness of the new meaning of the word "gay".

7:31 AM  
Blogger JustRex said...

Popeye is my hero.

8:58 AM  

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