I do not think I like long distance air travel. Not because I mind the time spent locked in an aluminum cigar at 30,000 feet with screaming babies and unpleasant flight attendants but rather because I don’t like waking up in one place with a specific environment and climate and waking up the next day thousands of miles away in a completely foreign land.
Which is, oddly, not particularly foreign.
The benefit to this sort of travel is that you’re thrown into the “deep end.” Here you are, make the best of it. It forces you to very quickly go native; to swiftly figure out the road network, where the hotels and restaurants and good bars are. Welcome to Denver, you’re on your friggin’ own.
I prefer the long, gradual acclimation to the environment. You get used to seeing nothing but scrubby brown and green. No trees but pine trees. No grass but prairie grass. It’s a bit of a systemic shock to leave a hot day on the east coast and end up in cold, dry high country.
A bizarre adjustment. Well worth it. It’s been a hell of a day. By 11 AM Mountain Time one old friend was married to a wonderful man while back east at the same time another old friend was being committed to the grave.
What’s there for it but to gaze out on the mountains and think of everyone past, present and future and hope for their happiness – in this life and the next.