It’s with a heavy heart that i board my flight to Melbourne soon .. .the $300 difference between the train and the flight option ($540 by overnight train vs $180 economy flight + taxis) plus the fact i need to be 2 hours east of melb by 9 am mean i must fly for the first time in over a year. The fact is the terrible state of train travel in this country means i must spew large volumes of carbon out into the atmosphere to get to a sustainability leadership retreat. The irony doesn’t escape me.
Sigh, anyway a great article below on the soullessness of flight vs other forms of transport .. i couldn’t agree more .. i really do like the feeling of taking the train down despite the cost and lack of basic services (no wifi/power), sharing with strangers and impossibility of a good nights sleep (ok i dont like it THAT much!) …
This quote from the article linked sums up my feelings nicely … “Airplanes are a means of ignoring the spaces in between your point of origin and your destination. By contrast, a surface journey allows you to look out on those spaces, at eye level and on a human scale…”
Thanks to the Volcano, An Escape From the Jet Age - NYTimes.com
