My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

To Greece by train - and other journeys of the mind, body and soul

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Two hours in Atlanta Georgia

July 16th, 2011 by jane · Uncategorized

My flight onto Asheville, North Carolina is delayed because the crew has­n’t arrived yet, and then a big thun­der storm hit, and light­en­ing strikes inside the air­port com­pound means that no planes are mov­ing for a while. A good while.

I’m sit­ting here enjoy­ing hear­ing the sweet drawl of the Southern accents and see­ing Black faces again.  Laura tells me that there are still big divi­sions between the African American and white com­munties in Asheville, and that she is enga­ging with the African American com­munity through poetry.

Atlanta air­port is huge.  Detroit air­port was humung­ous.  At each air­port there’s a slick, mod­ern, bur­row­ing indoor train to take you to your gate. Edinburgh air­port is a small rodent to these dinosuars. Everything here is huge.  Big cars, big roads, big fridges, big bel­lies.  The high aver­age car­bon foot­print of the aver­age American is so alarm­ingly visible.

Delta is the Greyhound of the skies, the Ryan air of the States.  Most flights are overbooked.

On land­ing at Detroit we are told that small hand-held elec­tric­al gad­gets can be used again, and fin­gers are out tap­ping cell phones, smart phones, ipods and the like before we even get to the gate.

All of us fly­ing with so many per­son­al pos­ses­sions. How would it be if we trav­elled with little but the clothes we stood up in and a full wel­com­ing heart? No gad­gets, no char­gers, no wheel-pulled cases.  Just a note­book and a pen and my glasses to read.

Give me a red cres­ted Sandhill Crane to ride.  No air con­di­tioned cab­in, Coca Cola vend­ing, inter­com announce­ments and flat screen news.  With a ka-r-ouk, ka-r-ouk we’d be off tak­ing a non-pre­scribed line safely below the clouds, powered by a gen­er­ous cubit of feathered grace and with the sum­mer air on our legs.

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The American’s car is his castle

July 16th, 2011 by jane · climate change, travel, USA

Venture, Highlander, Uplander, Hummer,

Trailblazer, Envoy, Mariner, Dodge,

Riverado, Silverado, Avalanche, Liberty,

Power Stroke, Grand Prix, Avenger, Infiniti,

Yukon, Montana, Dakota Sport, Grand Cherokee

Names of vehicles at the Ludington State Park camp­ground.  Most of them huge.

 

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Fireflies

July 15th, 2011 by Chris · travel, USA


YouTube

I nev­er cared much for moon­lit skies,
I nev­er winked back at fireflies,
But now that the stars are in your eyes,
I’m begin­ning to see the light.

Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass — I’m Beginning To See The Light

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what we’ve been doing

July 11th, 2011 by callum · flights, food, trains, travel, USA

first we got a taxi to Edinburgh air­port and then we took a tiny pro­peller plane (which kept doing pro­peller exer­cises before going on to the run­way) to Dublin.

The plane that we went onthis is the plane that we went on

Then we had to go through secur­ity again and they threw away a bottle of water that I had bought past secur­ity at Edinburgh! Then we went through a US pre-clear­ance were they scanned our fin­ger­prints and made us look into a little cam­era. Then we had to wait for the big plane to take us to America.

Our flight was com­plete with lem­on soaked paper nap­kins so we wer­en’t delayed for mil­lions of years (see The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Secondary Phase/The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) and I “Wasn’t as scared as I was scared I was going to be scared!”

This is The Plane That We Went on to America!

When we got to Chicago air­port we did­n’t have to go through any more secur­ity checks so we col­lec­ted our bags and got the bus to the hotel.

It was the wrong hotel.

When we finally got to the right hotel we dis­covered the very cool ice dis­penser and that there really was, as advert­ised a TV in each room (pure excitement.)

The next day we went to the Chicago field museum and saw Sue (the largest and most com­plete Tyrannosaurus rex in the world) and  went on the under­ground adven­ture (a very dis­ap­point­ing sim­u­lat­or which showed you about the soil and “made you seem as though you were 100th of your size”).

After that we took the Amtrak to Grand Rapids. We went over a lot of level cross­ings so we got to hear the train whistle a lot!

The next day, at Debbie and Mike’s house we had blue­berry pan­cakes for break­fast and swam in the pool all morn­ing. in the after­noon we went to the lake near their house and swam there.

The next day we went to a steam and motor fair and saw lots of old tract­ors and steam boats. then we went in the lake again to cool off.

Yesterday (10÷7÷11) we went kayak­ing and canoe­ing on the Thornapple  river and saw lots of little fish and turtles (ter­ra­pins). Then we went in the river and  the lake (yet again!) to cool off.

Today we were going to to go camp­ing by lake Michigan earli­er but there was a huge thun­der­storm with thun­der and light­ning so we are going to go later.

sorry that  this post was so long

sorry that I haven’t blogged enough recently (there’s been so much to do)

sorry that I say sorry too much

bye by

CalluMullac  ” ;):):D

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Canoeing down the Thornapple River

July 11th, 2011 by jane · travel, USA

1 Northern Cardinal

1 Crayfish

2 White tailed deer

2 Turkey Vultures

3 Great Blue Herons

3 Turtles of unknown species

5 Muskrats

5 baby Turtles of the same unknown species

16 Belted Kingfishers

Ebony jewelwing damselflyEbony jew­el­wing dam­sel­flies dart­ing every­where, rest­ing on our paddles, hats and arms. Many mating.

Innumerable dragon­flies

And racoons screech­ing in the Silver Maple at 4am this morning

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Zap!!!

July 10th, 2011 by Chris · signage, trains, travel, USA

Warning sign on the El, ChicagoDon’t walk on the tracks now! (Warning sign on the Chicago “El”.)

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Amtrack health warning

July 10th, 2011 by Chris · signage, trains, travel, USA

Health warning on the trainHealth warn­ing on the train from Chicago. It does­n’t go to California, but just in case…

(Sorry it’s fuzzy — the light was very low and the train was boun­cing about.)

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This flying lark

July 9th, 2011 by jane · climate change, flights, travel, USA

Up at 4am after very little sleep. I’m really nervous about fly­ing so far after so long — this mys­ter­i­ous and magic­al pro­cess over which we have no con­trol and which seems to work on trust alone — and not look­ing for­ward to the bur­eau­crat­ic, unwel­com­ing and offi­cious immig­ra­tion pro­cesses. Also full of the dilem­mas of hav­ing chosen to emit so much car­bon.  All a bit emo­tion­ally exhaust­ing, and yet wildly excit­ing — and we’ve not even left the ground yet!

Edinburgh air­port at 5.30am is fright­en­ingly busy — far busier than Waverley train sta­tion would be at this time.  This is the norm for so many.  It’s far too easy, and too much fun.

Up above the clouds over South-East Scotland, the Irish sea and the Irish shores the magic is palp­able.  The won­der and delight of the skies, the sparkle of the sun on the clouds.  The mag­ni­fi­cence of human cra­tion and abil­ity — we can do it! We are won­der­ful! It is our birth­right to excel and suc­ceed and to push the bound­ar­ies in all mat­ters.  Progress can only be good.  Onwards and upwards!

Whizzing through the air at 500km/hr at 40,000feet both ter­ri­fies and exhiler­ates.  We are def­in­itely the fly­ing novices here, and yes, as pre­dicted, soci­ab­il­ity rat­ing so far is minimal.

As Naomi Klein says, just because we can do it does­n’t mean we should.  But how do we change that mindset?

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Pre-clearance

July 8th, 2011 by Chris · flights, travel, USA

Arrived in Chicago last night after a reas­on­ably stress-free jour­ney. The sys­tem in Dublin is that you get grilled and fin­ger­prin­ted in “US Pre-clear­ance”. We thought this just meant the first stage of the pro­cess, but actu­ally when we go here, we found that we had already cleared cus­toms and immig­ra­tion, and that it was actu­ally treated as a domest­ic flight. It makes sense I sup­pose — bet­ter than fly­ing people across the Atlantic if you’re not going to let them in. It was a bit odd to see Obama’s pic up on the wall in Dublin air­port though.

So we got out of the air­port quite quickly, and found the place where the shuttle minibuses to take you to hotels were. We spot­ted the one for Comfort Inns and jumped in and a friendly driver with an incom­pre­hens­ible accent whisked us to a hotel. The only prob­lem was that it was the wrong hotel — we ought to have been at the Comfort Suites. It seems that like domain names, names for hotels are in short sup­ply. Nobody wants to be Heartbreak Hotel, Irritation Inn or even Mild Annoyance Motel (though I have stayed in some of those places, believe me).

Mike came to res­cue us any­way and we were soon cor­rectly installed. Nature encountered so far includes pois­on ivy (seen but not touched!) and fire­flies on sub­urb­an lawns, which are a delight.

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Be patterns, be examples

July 6th, 2011 by Chris · climate change, flights, USA

Be pat­terns, be examples in all coun­tries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your car­riage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheer­fully over the world, answer­ing that of God in every one.

George Fox, 1656

That fam­ous Quaker quote seems appro­pri­ate as we set off to new coun­tries, places, islands nations. We’re in the air­port, about to board our flight for Chicago and catch­ing some time to blog. Last time I wrote, we were busy not fly­ing around Europe, and writ­ing about why plane travel is such a bad idea. So why are we about to waste over 2 tonnes of CO2 each on this trip?

Well of course we’ve a good reas­on: the main pur­ose of the trip is to vis­it Jane’s sis­ter and her fam­ily in Michigan — we’ve not been to vis­it in the 12 years she’s been there. Mike, her hus­band has­n’t been well and we’d like to give the fam­ily a wee bit of sup­port and of course to spend some pre­cious time with them. A clas­sic example of George Monbiot’s love miles. As he puts it:

If your sis­ter-in-law is get­ting mar­ried in Buenos Aires, it is both immor­al to travel there, because of cli­mate change, and immor­al not to, because of the offence it causes.

When I told our friend Julian that we were going to break our no fly­ing vows, his response was that the prob­lem was not so much the actu­al car­bon diox­ide emis­sions, but the example. People will think “if Chris and Jane — who seem to think care­fully about these mat­ters — are fly­ing, then it’s OK if I do too”. I thought that was a really good point, and I sup­pose I had­n’t really thought before that people might be tak­ing me as a pat­tern. But since we did our over­land trip to Greece, quite a few people we know have been inspired to make sim­il­ar travel decisions, or at least to think very ser­i­ously before they jump on a plane.

If we aspire, as George Fox put it to “be pat­terns, be examples”, then we need to real­ise that that is quite a ser­i­ous under­tak­ing, and that people might actu­ally fol­low our examples, pos­it­ive or neg­at­ive. It’s not that we should feel guilt, more that we need to be mind­ful in our choices for action as we walk cheer­fully over the world.

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