Types of travel

My lovely wife and and I have been doing a lot of trip planning. If all goes well, Friday we'll leave New Hampshire and a couple of days later we'll be in Florida. I used to drive it non-stop, but it's much slower going towing a boat.

Flying down would only take a few hours. Of course, I couldn't exactly take a boat on the plane. Then there's the whole TSA thing. It would take an extreme emergency for me to ever fly again. My flying boycott won't change the system, but it will limit my contact with idiots and wannabe Nazis.

We plan on doing some sailing this winter. The hull speed of our little sailboat is only 5.5 knots, not very fast at all.

It wasn't all that many years ago when the fast mode of transportation was by sailboat. While not fast by today's standards, it really is a marvelous way to travel. The wind does the work, and it's free. Even a small boat like mine can carry quite a bit of stuff.

Imagine thinking of journeys, not in hours or days, but in weeks and months. No wonder we say the journey is more important than the destination -there was a whole heck of a lot more journey back in the day.

Imagine setting out on a good ship, with equipment and supplies to last for many weeks. The possibilities are endless. Even national borders are just lines on a chart. In my minds eye, I picture a boat on a long passage. Let's say someone left the world behind on September 10, 2001. Several months later when they land a distant port, the world has changed.

If something like that happened to me, it'd be really tempting to quickly resupply and set out again, in hopes the world would be a bit saner by the next port of call.

-Sixbears