When I flew to Pittsburgh last June to find an apartment, it was the first time I'd been on a plane since jumping out of one. The ascent to cruising altitude was different than every other ascent I'd made, because up until this Summer what happened outside the cabin window was just an unfolding story, geographic in nature, being told on a continental canvas, at a crawling 550mph.

That particular climb into the wild blue hither was different, because I could no longer suspend my belief at the sight outside my window. Having thrown myself (err, been thrown, that is) out of a plane at 14,000 feet, I knew what that distance really means, and what the fall fees like. Not that I was panicked, but it created a conduit of reality, piped into the otherwise insulated torpedo of calm within the rushing mayhem of wind and thrust just inches away from the injection-molded membrane and embedded windows.

Like that four-hour voyage to O'Hare, this straight shot from Pittsburgh to San Francisco brings to light a new dimension of the incredible nature of air travel. Just three weeks ago Ammy and I spent eight days driving 3200 miles between the same dots that I'm currently connecting at over 20 times the aggregate speed.

When you're a kid (or an avid Slashdot reader) one of those questions that comes up from time to time is 'what would your superpower be?' My answer was always the same: teleportation. The power to free myself from the confines of geography always seemed more enticing than freedom from gravity or other powers (and yet in my dreams I can fly when nobody's looking).

After spending days driving cross-country, I have a better feel for what it must have been like a century or two ago. The magnitude difference between flying from coast to coast and driving that distance is roughly the same as the difference between driving it and taking a wagon train across the western frontier. Surprising to me though is that the main difference isn't one of duration, though that's the easiest metric to measure: It's intentionality.

An 18th century family bent on homesteading in the West had to give up everything. The journey was all-consuming, a tremendous commitment, not only for the journey out there, but because of the difficulty of returning. You don't up and move to Nevada, and come back to Boston for holidays.

When cars and the highway system started to tie our country together with asphalt ribbons and interchange bows, lifestyles progressed on with it. At the end of manifest destiny, when Americans had it all, we moved to the next step: having it all at once. Exploring the country was a personal adventure; not a dangerous expedition into the unknown, but a voyage of self-discovery as much as one of first-hand experiences of secondhand stories and pictures.

Now that air travel is ubiquitous, the hour-hand is the one that matters. Intentionality takes a seat next to convenience when for most intents travel is instantaneous.

[side note: I'm looking at the window at the most fantastic lightning storm just outside Denver. It's a wild experience to watch it from the top of the thunderheads, illuminating the clouds more than the back(under)lighting of the city below. You can really see the paths the strikes take inside the clouds; arc-sparks joining together in a snaking pattern that stretches across miles, yet compressed to a few arc-minutes in my own view above it all.]

Of course price is a factor, but factoring in the opportunity costs of lost work when driving (or wagonnering), air travel is far more efficient.

But I digress. Economic arguments are too easy. What I mean to say is that air travel is already on par with so many levels of teleportation. Sure, 20-cent transport booths would be another leap beyond what we have today, but when it takes between 3 and 9 hours to get anywhere in the country from anywhere else in the country more than 180 miles away, distance starts to lose its meaning. How is Denver different than Anchorage or New York when two hours of air travel represents just a faction of the time spent packing, getting to and from the airport, waiting for flights or camping out at baggage claim? Mental maps start to deviate from mercator projections as temporal distances rely more on hubs, connections, and distances from airports than they do on any measure of linear distance. New York City will always be closer than Elko, Nevada. It's hardly the first time. Seas and mountain ranges were more powerful distancers than miles of grassland a century ago. Now they cease to matter, as long as there's enough population to justify conquering nature, carving tunnels and spanning bridges.

It was only 500 years ago that the average European wouldn't travel more than 20 miles from their birthplace. Now consider that for those people in that time, a 20-mile journey would be taken on foot, carrying supplies on their back. Navigating on rough terrain (as seen through our soft-soled eyes), they would be lucky to travel such a distance in a day. Certainly it seems primitive to have a life-long horizon of less than 20 miles, but when a third of Americans haven't even seen an ocean, and most haven't ever been farther from home than they could get in a day, who are we to declare ourselves cosmopolitan through anything other than convenience?

Anyhow, this is the shortest 5-hour plane trip I've ever taken. Recalling so many recent 5-hour stints behind the wheel, ploughing through the night and crosswind for 400 miles before finding a hotel to make up for a morning and afternoon of sightseeing, being in the air now feels so much like cheating. A part of me misses the road, and the unexpected sights that bind the cross-country travellers together in ways that being trapped in a middle seat vieing for elbow room never could. On the road all you share with your fellow travellers is the thrill of the journey. Your journeys are all different, and you're coming from and going to different places, both physically and emotionally. On the plane, everyone is either from point A or point B, and the trait you share is wanting to get to the other one as quickly as possible.

That, and I keep expecting to see Bobbi, excitedly urging me along.