Take a stand: Travel by car

Home Opinion Take a stand: Travel by car
Take a stand: Travel by car
SkyWest Airlines. | Flickr

This is an impassioned plea to ask everyone to stop traveling by plane and instead move to the freer and more comfortable car. Road trips are the superior way to travel because you can avoid the uncomfortable and soul-degrading processes of having to wear a mask for hours on end, the airplane stewardesses peering down at you to make sure your “face covering” covers your nose and mouth, and the generally dismal spiritual environment airports usually have. 

The airport: Thousands of people, masks covering two-thirds of their faces, pass you, and it seems like you’ve stumbled into a new level of purgatory, where all you see are lonely eyes, peeping out under the mask, too afraid to show their face and see if you, too, are human. Not only do you spend hours without seeing someone’s full face, you are not sure they can even hear, with AirPods and headphones covering people’s ears as well. 

Even after making it through this ghastly level of purgatory, you must enter the actual aircraft, and do battle with the nagging stewardess keeping an eye on you to make sure you’re in compliance with the mask policy. Added to the general discomfort of flying, this makes a trip to the airport an absolute mistake. 

You may even see an American Airlines flight attendant with a Black Lives Matter pin fastened to her uniform. How lovely. To continue giving money to airlines who have toed the line with their woke policies just so you shave off a couple hours of your time is surely not worth it. 

The spiritual costs to traveling through an airport are sufficiently negative to induce any reasonable person to stop flying. Spending that much time isolated by masks and earphones amongst thousands of people damages your soul, and one can only take so much of that damage before you are permanently hurt by it. But there are also positive reasons for choosing a road trip instead. 

Road trips are a better way to spend time with family and friends, save money, and see America. Flying on a plane doesn’t lend itself to good conversation or relationship-building the way that road-tripping does. Given the amount of people with AirPods and iPhones, stuck in their little corner of the aircraft, you barely get the chance to say hello. Now, with the masks firmly placed on our faces, you can barely hear their hello. 

Sure, in a car someone can hunker down and ignore you, but in that environment you get to choose who travels with you. If that’s the case, you’re going to choose people who you know, who will actually want to spend time with you while traveling. On an airplane, you are surrounded by strangers. 

Second, driving is always a way to save money. Gas and food costs are usually cheaper than airfare. While road trips are more time-consuming than flights, my advice is to take a few days off and make the trip. Your soul will be better for it. 

Finally, road-tripping provides the opportunity to see America. Cross-country roads trips have been the stuff of novels, movies, and popular culture for decades. Why not join the trend? You can not only do something for liberty, but also be a part of popular culture. Flying on a plane causes you to miss the natural beauty of the U.S., while driving allows you to take the scenic route and see what America has to offer. 

 

Emma Cummins is a senior George Washington Fellow studying politics.