When Travel was Romantic

Edward said:

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The newer Airbus those are all using with the double-decks is fantastic, yes. Emirates are wodnerful - the only pain with them is the obligatory stop-off in Dubai, though so fr I've never hadto stay there longer than a couple of hours before the next plane. I flew Qatar to Beijing once. FAntastic service, though a long trip - ten hours to Qatar layoff of six hours, then another ten hours to Beijing....

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Nice as the A380 is, it’s been something of a flop for Airbus. Production of the plane is coming to an end soon.

Boeing opted (wisely, as it appears in retrospect) against developing a competing super-jumbo. Its much more successful 747, the “Queen of the Skies,” which has been in production for more than half a century, is coming to an end as well.

Bushman said:

The irony of your name being Belfastboy, as my only experience with anything near to high speed rail was when I did a study abroad in Dublin for two weeks, and spent the weekend visiting friends in Belfast! And I found it an enjoyable, 2hour trip.

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The Dublin Express service is a wonderful thing - it's been twenty odd years since I was last on it (the last time I did the Dublin- Belfast run I took the airport bus from Dublin airport to Glengall Street, ninety minutes) but I seem to recall some of the services were down to an hour direct. For a while when the economy picked up again in the Republic, there was a lot of talk of well-heeled Dublin lawyers buying big houses in Belfast for comparative buttons, and using the express to commute.

tonyb said:

^^^^^
Most of us here are of sufficient seniority to remember when air travel was a BFD, the province of the well-heeled. The rest of us traveled by air only under extreme circumstances, and got duded-up for the occasion — coat and tie and shined-up shoes.

“Airbus” is a fitting name for that major commercial aircraft manufacturer. These days it’s not uncommon to see air travelers in sweatshirts. That’s fine by me.

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Back when I started flying more regularly (living in London, it's now the only practical way of travelling to visit unless you're very careful financially: combination of boat and train takes longer, which is fine if you're going for at least a week, but add in the cost of the train to get the the ferry and it is, shamefully, often double the cost of flying), I used to wear a suit on the plane. Often that was because I was travelling for work, which I used to do more often in the days of EC-funded research, but even flying to visit family as a young man in my middle twenties, regularly travelling alone in and out of Belfast, I found I got pulled over for significantly fewer "random" security searches. As in not all or them, all the time (nowadays it's much more occasional - "How do we look like we're not just racially profiling anyone who looks a bit middle-eastern? Quick, get the Irish guy!").

The main thing I have observed over the years in terms of how the average flyer dresses, though, is that the more expensive the ticket, as a rule the sloppier the dress. I've rarely seen people as ill-dressed headed towards the back of the plane as I have in first class.

One of the more interesting quirks I've seen is the Chinese custom of changing into pajamas at the beginning of an overnight flight, then back again before landing. Back in the days before Air China separated out their first class from business, as opposed to the former "Business-First" (around the same time that most other major airlines were cutting first entirely to expand business on many routes), we used to be given a free pair of lovely, jersey cotton pjs at the start of every flight. Alas, when the separate out first class, they stopped this as one of their downgrades of the Business end of Business-First...

tonyb said:

Nice as the A380 is, it’s been something of a flop for Airbus. Production of the plane is coming to an end soon.

Boeing opted (wisely, as it appears in retrospect) against developing a competing super-jumbo. Its much more successful 747, the “Queen of the Skies,” which has been in production for more than half a century, is coming to an end as well.

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Be interesting to see what comes next. Something greener, I hope. Trains are great where they offer a genuine alternative, but sometimes flying really is the only option. I'm all for cutting flights (and/or making them punitively expensive) where they genuinely are a complete indulgence, but it's just not realistic to expect the world to go back a century and stop flying altogether now.

Edward said:

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Be interesting to see what comes next. Something greener, I hope. Trains are great where they offer a genuine alternative, but sometimes flying really is the only option. I'm all for cutting flights (and/or making them punitively expensive) where they genuinely are a complete indulgence, but it's just not realistic to expect the world to go back a century and stop flying altogether now.

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Wasn’t there just recently an electric-powered airplane that crossed the Channel?

The technology is very much in its infancy, and maybe the large-capacity all-electric passenger airplane will never be feasible, but I wouldn’t bet against it. Hybrid jet fuel/electric aircraft are on the drawing boards.

It took just a few decades to go from Kitty Hawk to the jet age. We are clever primates.

The first time I arrived in São Paulo (1992) I found this:



Estação da Luz (Luz Station), 1901. So many signs of the old glamour! Quite faded, but we could find the details. Many trains were old, 1950s and I loved this.

Brazil wanted to privilege automobiles on 1950s and also statized the most important railways.

Now it’s possible to travel on tourist trains only (at least in São Paulo State). Is possible to find something romantic/glamurous? Yes, if you forget the people around you.

Don’t try to find glamour on air travels. How to stay classy when taking out all clothes for the X-Ray and so on?

They didn’t make many of these, a total of 56 of them, I think. Major reliability and safety problems.

Yesterday evening I returned from a 2,600-mike, five-day road trip from greater Denver to North Central Washington state and back again, to deliver a dog and visit with my Dear Old Ma for a day and a half.

I’ve covered that territory many times and I’ve never tired of it. As I’ve observed here before, travel in our time can be plenty romantic, too, if you’re open to it.

Edward said:

... all the time (nowadays it's much more occasional - "How do we look like we're not just racially profiling anyone who looks a bit middle-eastern? Quick, get the Irish guy!").

The main thing I have observed over the years in terms of how the average flyer dresses, though, is that the more expensive the ticket, as a rule the sloppier the dress. I've rarely seen people as ill-dressed headed towards the back of the plane as I have in first class.

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Earlier in my travels I seemed a suspicious Irishman, regularly selected for profile.
Things seem more relaxed now, aside noted security criticism of books inside carryon.

I've noticed that too. First lacks class... I habitually sit in steerage.

I often travel to Sonora Mexico in my 4x4 or Harley and sometimes on my bmw Gs1.2k. Love the journey. However, I will be focusing on sailing. My Stevens 47 is coming together very nice and will be better than when it left the factory. The boat will outlive me and that is the goal. I truly hope in the future people will enjoy it somewhere in a uncrowded shore.

photo2u said:

I often travel to Sonora Mexico in my 4x4 or Harley and sometimes on my bmw Gs1.2k. Love the journey. However, I will be focusing on sailing. My Stevens 47 is coming together very nice and will be better than when it left the factory. The boat will outlive me and that is the goal. I truly hope in the future people will enjoy it somewhere in a uncrowded shore.

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I assume you are a person of some means. Or is it that you’ve forgone most of the more common property acquisitions (a house on dry land, for instance) in favor of things like a Stevens 47?

Me, I get seasick in a bathtub. Whatever romantic notions I might once have had for living aboard a boat (a viable housing alternative in and around Seattle, where I lived for 46 years) bumped up against that unfortunate truth.

Friend, I am just a guy who learn to hustle. My real teacher was necessity. The Stevens 47 has been a 20 year goal. I saved and worked in construction to realized my dream. I did retired at 55. My mom wanted me to be a responsible productive man. As a kid, I started bringing money to the house at 13 by cleaning yards and helping people at 2 dollars an hour. At 14, I was doing heavy masonry work. I was lucky to have a master natural stone artist and teacher who I assisted for many years. He taught me the skills to take on just about any natural stone project.
To be honest, I got sea sick my first time on a boat. However, I did enjoy retrofitting some beauties. My first boat I purchased was a tartan 37 that I repair after purchasing it from an insurance company. I paid 6k. Then invested 4k in parts. After I was done, the boat look so beautiful. Foolishly, I sold it but to this moment, I am looking for another Tartan 37 to rebuild. When I pass, my dream is to give the two beauties to my love ones.

I’m no slave to ambition, which is not to say that I haven’t worked from too early an age. I’ve been paying into Social Security since age 13, and did the lawn mowing and paper route kinds of work for years prior to that.

My stepfather compelled my brothers and me to work at a time when our efforts might have been better expended on, say, studying. He wasn’t one to shy away from work himself, but in the end most of his efforts went for naught, seeing how he had lousy entrepreneurial chops. You might think that multiple bankruptcies would prompt introspection in that regard, but no, not with him.

So what does that have to do with the romance of travel? Not much, except that traveling costs something. I recall conversations with people from more affluent backgrounds who told of spending extended periods in exotic locales where Yankee money goes a long, long way. The suggestion was that just about anyone could do it. But what they didn’t know, apparently, is that we less fortunate souls would come back to nothing — no home, no job, no money. Blue collar workers don’t get sabbaticals.

The average working-class American man of the 20th century did his only real traveling courtesy of the Armed Forces.

^^^^^
For travel outside the U.S., true enough.

Among my people, a family vacation by automobile to the Black Hills or the Grand Canyon was a BFD. It was the sort of thing that happened maybe once every several years. Otherwise, vacations were camping trips somewhere within a couple-three hundred miles of home.

I’ve ventured off this continent but once in my life. I have no plans for doing so again. It’s not that I’m averse to it, but I don’t feel deprived, either. I’ve seen many a wondrous sight right here in the continental U.S.

And I’ve found wonder in the mundane, too. Many of the sorts of things celebrated among this bunch can still be found in the thousands of smaller settlements across the land. Chain motels and convenience stores and the like dominate along the Interstate highways. But take the old roads and find the time capsule towns and the mom-and-pop lodgings and restaurants.

photo2u said:

Friend, I am just a guy who learn to hustle. My real teacher was necessity. The Stevens 47 has been a 20 year goal. I saved and worked in construction to realized my dream. I did retired at 55. My mom wanted me to be a responsible productive man. As a kid, I started bringing money to the house at 13 by cleaning yards and helping people at 2 dollars an hour. At 14, I was doing heavy masonry work. I was lucky to have a master natural stone artist and teacher who I assisted for many years. He taught me the skills to take on just about any natural stone project.
To be honest, I got sea sick my first time on a boat. However, I did enjoy retrofitting some beauties. My first boat I purchased was a tartan 37 that I repair after purchasing it from an insurance company. I paid 6k. Then invested 4k in parts. After I was done, the boat look so beautiful. Foolishly, I sold it but to this moment, I am looking for another Tartan 37 to rebuild. When I pass, my dream is to give the two beauties to my love ones.

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Congrats buddy. Keep up the good work and lots of luck with your ivory scrimshaw....

tonyb said:

^^^^^
For travel outside the U.S., true enough.

Among my people, a family vacation by automobile to the Black Hills or the Grand Canyon was a BFD. It was the sort of thing that happened maybe once every several years. Otherwise, vacations were camping trips somewhere within a couple-three hundred miles of home.

I’ve ventured off this continent but once in my life. I have no plans for doing so again. It’s not that I’m averse to it, but I don’t feel deprived, either. I’ve seen many a wondrous sight right here in the continental U.S.

And I’ve found wonder in the mundane, too. Many of the sorts of things celebrated among this bunch can still be found in the thousands of smaller settlements across the land. Chain motels and convenience stores and the like dominate along the Interstate highways. But take the old roads and find the time capsule towns and the mom-and-pop lodgings and restaurants.

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I have a couple of Kodachrome 8mm reels of some family's road trip to Pikes Peak in the summer of 1940. I have a feeling that the people who took these movies were city people, because the majority of the footage is of vast, empty roads -- the sort of thing you just didn't see in the urban landscape of the time.

LizzieMaine said:

The average working-class American man of the 20th century did his only real traveling courtesy of the Armed Forces.

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Uncle Sam's Army kicked my ass all over the place. Called my mom around Christmas
and she thought I was in Saigon, but told her I was enroute to Bethlehem.

martinsantos said:

The first time I arrived in São Paulo (1992) I found this:

View attachment 395048

Estação da Luz (Luz Station), 1901. So many signs of the old glamour! Quite faded, but we could find the details. Many trains were old, 1950s and I loved this.



Don’t try to find glamour on air travels. How to stay classy when taking out all clothes for the X-Ray and so on?

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Gorgeous pix counselor. How goes your law practice?

Speaking about airport security procedure, fifteen years or so ago; while babysitting
my sister's kids I took a Playboy away from my nephew. Took it home, looked it over,
read through it, tossed out. A week or so later going through Chicago's O'Hare
Airport checkpoint security, my brief and carryon were searched.
And standing next to me was the Playboy playmate. Her bag was also searched,
magazine found and she explained she was the centerfold. I told her my nephew
said hello.

A suite on the Orient Express, according to the site I stole this image from.

The world is like a house. If you owned a house, would you stay in one room all the time? Or explore every room in the house? Travel is not about comfort. Even (especially?) during the golden era of travel, it was about experiencing the “other”. I could care less about leg room or Vegan in flight menu options. Give me a window seat above terra incognita.

The terra incognita is beautiful.




It's the eternal mare incognita that bores me.