“…hopefully, than to arrive.” Or so the saying goes. This past weekend, however, I found myself with too much travel, too much work, and too little time. The question I had to answer: Fly, drive, or… something else?
My weekend was neatly defined by a fixed beginning (10pm Friday night, by which time I would have seen my son off to sleep and packed my bags) and a fixed end (5:30am Monday morning, when I would be at my current day job, sweeping floors for a faceless corporation). In between I needed to get from Columbus, Ohio to Toronto, Ontario and shoot two days’ worth of footage for a video review of the 2011 Ford Edge. Not a problem; I had plane tickets available if I wanted them.
Would flying be the best way to go? I looked at the time involved. I need to leave my house two hours before takeoff for international flights, even if “international” just means “Canada”. The flight itself would be about an hour and a half. There would be half an hour getting my baggage, going through Customs, and walking out, and then I would need to drive, or ride, an hour or so to the filming location. That’s five hours minimum, if everything went perfectly, and it would happen on the airline’s schedule. The cost of such a flight would be about four hundred dollars round trip, plus thirty bucks to park at the airport.
Driving directly from my house to the location would be 408 miles each way, and including a bit of a wait for Customs would be approximately six and a half hours. Fuel would would be forty-two gallons at $2.89 each, for a total of $121.38. That left three hundred dollars for depreciation, tires, brakes, oil changes, and whatnot. Needless to say, my Town Car, being a member of that almighty and indestructible class of automobiles spoken of in hushed tones as a “Panther”, does not cost that kind of scratch to operate.
The financial side of it looked good. Time for the intangibles. Let’s talk about these “nudie booth” scanners for a minute. I like to go through the scanner looking my best, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. At the age of fifteen, merely rolling the word “brassiere” around in my head was sufficient to produce the desired response. At twenty-five, indulging myself in a bit of eidetic recall did the trick. Past my thirty-ninth birthday, I’m forced to edit and produce a lengthy feature in my mind’s eye starring at least two ex-girlfriends, my favorite automotive PR rep, and a Titanic-era Kate Winslet in a variety of degrading, yet exhilarating scenarios that the publisher of La Nouvelle Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu would have refused to print on the grounds of public morality. And even that sometimes just makes me sleepy nowadays.
No matter. It turns out that the federal government is capable of perversions I never imagined, whether it’s molesting a three-year-old or popping a cancer victim’s colostomy bag for fun. As far as I can tell, the purpose of the TSA is to address the inconvenient racial and religious aspects of modern terrorism by enraging white, Protestant Americans to the point that one of them blows up an airport, thus eliminating the proven advantage of Israeli-style profiling and returning us to the rainbow wonderland of imaginary political thought. But I digress.
I also wanted to bring a guitar and travel amp with me. My definition of “travel amp” is a Roland VGA-3, and there isn’t an airline out there that will simply let me toss a VGA-3 on the conveyor belt. My Town Car, however, will swallow a VGA-3, a VGA-5, and a VGA-7. I have all three. I did it once just to see if it would all fit. I’m waiting for the VGA-9. I don’t think that will fit, but I’m willing to buy it and try. My guitar for the trip would be the the does-it-all, eighteen-pickup-combination, Jimmy-Page-to-John-Mayer Electra Dynasty XV3GR. Again, not popular with the airlines.
I couldn’t think of any reason not to drive, but then I realized that filming a video wasn’t all that I had on my plate for the weekend. I needed to turn out three thousand or so words on various automotive topics, plus I needed to design and implement a small MySQL-driven application for a friend. Say ten hours total of work. I looked at the schedule and saw that the only places I could cut that much time from would be sleeping. Unless, that is, I managed to do a few hours’ worth of work each way on the plane and in the airport. But even that didn’t look good. Using a laptop in coach class is miserable and on short flights it’s almost a waste of time.
Back to the no-sleep plan. Once again I’ve overbooked myself and will pay by spending the next few days in a zombie-like state. I was bemoaning the situation to my girlfriend, when she said, “You should just have someone drive you.”
The notion made me recoil. As a child, my parents laid egalitarianism on me with the heaviest of trowels. Pick up your own mess. Shine your own shoes. Mow your own lawn. My father would make biting comments about the people who used car services on the East Coast or hired batmen to manage their lives. I inherited that disdain, plus a bit of social anxiety to boot. I’m so deeply nervous about the prospect of being “served” that I frequently tip baggage handlers for doing… nothing, as I labor under the load of two suitcases and two backpacks.
This I explained to the woman I call “Vodka McBigbra”. She pretended to sympathize, asked a question about Michael Bloomfield’s bridge pickup to distract me into a world of my own making, and then called a friend. Before I knew it, I was fluffing up a pillow in the back of my Signature Limited while a handsome, ruthlessly efficient twentysomething fellow shoveled traffic out of the left lane ahead. After a nap, I plugged in my laptop, paired to my Droid phone, and started editing documents. The return trip was just the same; I relaxed in the back and alternated between Facebook chat and vehicle reviews. Jarod, my driver and pal for the weekend, had just two requests. One was that I pay his expenses and toss him a few bottles of liquor from the duty-free store. A hundred bucks, tops.
The second was that we stop by the Naval Yard in Buffalo so he could see the ship on which his father served. It never would have occurred to me to stop there, but after a few moments looking at a very-impressive looking Navy destroyer, I was glad we’d stopped. I arrived home refreshed, completely caught up on my life, and ready for sleep for six solid hours. It’s better to travel… by car.
The most important question, is: When did they start putting navigation in the Town Car?
Town Cars had navigation from 2003 to 2006, if I recall correctly, as part of the “THX System”. The head unit in that photo is a Pioneer AVH-P4200DVD, which I had installed last month.
Correct, THX and Navi went hand in hand. The stock Navi isn’t half bad, but the THX tweeters near the A-pillar are what “made” the package for me.
A Town Car with navigation…that somehow strikes me as steampunk.
Jack, you are becoming a great writer man…
Cool story though, too bad I’ll probably never drive one of those; even chances of driving RWD here in sunny, dry FWD loving Chile!
Yes indeed, Jack’s style improves with every release.
@leshnah, good to see i’m not alone reading TTAC here in Chile. From time to time, you see panters in the small ads, as a matter of fact, i saw one in El Mercurio this weekend. Another question would be wether you would want to drive such a rare car here. What about something like an old W124 Merc, perhaps one with the 4.2 litre V8 ?
Bravo! You solved a complex and seemingly impossible problem by simply thinking outside the box and doing something you’ve never thought you’d do before. The question is, now that you’ve discovered the joy and benefit of being driven in a car, will we be seeing a lot more of you in the back seat of your Town Car, being chauffeured everywhere? Perhaps reading a newspaper and wearing a funny little hat?
Jack didn’t solve it, Vodka McBigbra did. Jack’s head was firmly inside the box.
“At the age of fifteen, merely rolling the word “brassiere” around in my head was sufficient to produce the desired response. At twenty-five, indulging myself in a bit of eidetic recall did the trick. Past my thirty-ninth birthday, I’m forced to edit and produce a lengthy feature in my mind’s eye starring at least two ex-girlfriends, my favorite automotive PR rep, and a Titanic-era Kate Winslet in a variety of degrading, yet exhilarating scenarios that the publisher of La Nouvelle Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu would have refused to print on the grounds of public morality. And even that sometimes just makes me sleepy nowadays. ”
Just wait a few more years. You’re going to have a cast of thousands.
So, he’s going to be playing back _Caligula_ in his head?
Poor Bob, gone, but not forgotten.
I too have been thinking that’s the only way to get a full body scan. But when I had the chance I was so harried and aggravated I just couldn’t get into the groove.
I face this dilemma several times a year between Florida and Virginia. Before the cat died it was easy, drive. Now I stew about it for weeks. My ultimate solution, a Towncar and driver.
And the next time you need a driver, call me.
"As far as I can tell, the purpose of the TSA is to address the inconvenient racial and religious aspects of modern terrorism by enraging white, Protestant Americans to the point that one of them blows up an airport, thus eliminating the proven advantage of Israeli-style profiling and returning us to the rainbow wonderland of imaginary political thought. "
Bravo Jack. Well said.
And great solution to your dilemna – but your girlfriend should get the credit.
“Vodka McBigbra” is going to be some cheesed that she plays no acknowledged role in your erotic imagination. This strategic error will cost you a fancy dinner and pricy new shoes, minimum.
BTW, for the reasons you cite I used to drive rather than fly between two major cities. Factor in the cost/hassle of car rental or multiple cabs in the destination city, plus my ability to control the schedule, and the choice was obvious… particularly since I was able to bill a mileage charge, so that the travel was in fact revenue-positive.
Great story. Brings back memories. I essentially put myself through college as a driver for hire using the passenger’s car. I got to drive a lot of cars I would never have been able to buy and developed informed opinions about which cars are best for long drives (back in about 1980 it was the Mercedes-Benz W123 cars the upscale Chevrolets and Buicks (better than the Cadillacs), a Rolls Royce sedan or a late T2b VW bus. My opinions were mostly informed by my behind and lower back. I still have most of the routes within a few hundred miles of home engraved in my brain 30 years later.
I suspect the coming economy (no, we haven’t bottomed yet) will see much more of this type of commerce between individuals when one has a need the other can provide at the right trade off.
Jack… I think the time has come for another option for travelers. Just as “Super Shuttles” are inbetween a bus line and a taxi, I see my service as being inbetween plane travel and buses. Full sized buses, but room for only about 20 people to travel in a lounge type comfort. Hostess’s to serve food and drinks, room to get up and walk around, bathrooms on board, etc. all for the price of a first class airplane ticket (maybe less). No screening, no invasive searches, no long lines at the airport… you get the idea.
Another idea would be a luxury taxi service that would provide long distance travel between cities, one person/family at a time using a large Sprinter outfitted not for RV use, but more like a limo (without all of the vulgar bling). Of course, this would be for people rich enough for private travel, but not so rich they can afford a private plane. Either method would have wifi to allow you to do your work while traveling and not worry about the driving, have entertainment (music, DVDs, satellite TV, etc.).
Anyone out there want to help/advise/finance me in this?
You better keep this as an unscheduled service. Otherwise, America’s own Heimatsicherheitsdienst will bring a portable scanner and some gropers to your place of business.
One of the unintended consequences of the overheighted airline security is that it encourages people to drive more, which per mile is far more dangerous than flying was even figuring the casualties of 2001 as the baseline. In terms of environmental costs, flying generally produces fewer carbon emissions per passenger than driving if you assume driver-only car travel; as I recall, the break even point is somewhere between the second and third occupant of the car (assuming all airliner seats are full.)
Airline fatalities are one to two orders of magnitude lower than car fatalities, expressed per passenger mile. If you have to go to a particular destination, air is by far the safest way to do so. 2001’s terrorism deaths were a drop in the bucket. Even if you included the deaths in TWC in the total, over a long period of time air travel is still ridiculously safe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_safety#Statistics
Another way of looking at those statistics though is that air travel encourages more frequent and longer distance travel. I know that there are several flights to visit friends and family that I have been on that I would not have made if air travel was not an option. I have a limit of 500 or 1000 miles for 2- or 3-day weekend travel by car, respectively.
In that context, deaths per passenger-hour makes a little more sense. Air travel fares less well here, but still averages a quarter of the car travel death toll.
“IT beats dealing with the airline companies!”
I want my Caprice wagon back. Not only could you sit comfortably in the back seat, you could also fold both of the back seats and get a 4×8′ plateu on which at least three people can comfortably sleep for the entire trip.
Now all my cars have back seats so miserable that I have to call shotgun if I’m not driving. I’m seriously thinking about trashing the Stanza and getting a ’96 Roadmaster.
I’m seriously thinking about trashing the Stanza and getting a ’96 Roadmaster.
I know this is shocking coming from me, but do it. Do it soon. There will come a time in the not too distant future when these cars will be a distant memory and all traces of them will be gone from the marketplace, except for a small group of collectors.
Do it. I have the grand-daddy of the last gen B-body platform, a 77 Chevy Chevelle, and it was our roadtripper when I was growing up. I junked that one, and 10 years later got the ’77 and was reminded again of how great they were at eating up large quantities of road, comfortably and quietly. Even mine as decrepit as the suspesion is, does a fantastic if slightly floaty job of soaking up bumps from the tired original springs and bushings.
It’s reasonably quiet despite it’s upright and swoopy/squared design that only the mid ’70s does best.
Bad road trip manners is what made me get rid of my Contour despite it’s great gas mileage, it was painful to drive long distance.
Good story.
If I could afford it, I’d have a full-time driver on payroll.
Maybe I just need to create a Zip-It-like company which makes a driver available by the hour.
The contrast between the two options in this particular case for Jack are vibrant.
Airline: he would have traveled like a serf after being hassled and humiliated.
Car: he traveled like a Duke with a free-form itinerary and self-determination.
Airline: he would have traveled like a serf after being hassled and humiliated.
The pilots and flight attendants had it no better. I have mixed feelings about TSA. We had to endure TSA sometimes several times a day. Every airport was different – some had dedicated crew lines, some didn’t. The rules were all different and TSA loved to make examples out of uniformed pilots in public, what with the spread eagle stance in full view while being felt up by the 300 pound TSA kid with skoal in his mouth, and not able to keep an eye on my flight bag and rollerboard as it rumbles down the belt through the x-ray. Very dignified. OTH, I got that they had their jobs to do – some of it necessary, some of it just providing assurance to the traveling public. And once we were in the cruise phase of flight, we could cruise at .77M, so we had pretty good ground speeds, hopefully making the hassle worth it in distance/time.
Another home run of an article Jack!
Articles like this make me forget that whole “booth babe” series.
-ted
I think I’ll quote you the next time I’m discussing the TSA and their endless list of phantom enemies.
Wouldn’t have guessed that you could hire a driver for such a reasonable price. Regarding guitars and planes, I guess we can rule out a flight on United Airlines.
United Breaks Guitars
Great article about an interesting solution to a travel dilemma. Some great Baruthisms too.
But BEWARE, Jack! You risk nomination for Insufferable Snob Magazine’s Writer of the Year when your articles contain so many references to all the Great Brands You Use. Do we really need to know your favored brand of pickups, guitars, amps, underwear, cigars, vodka, and floss? Or are you maybe getting a little boost from these brands every time you mention them in print? (If the latter, in fairness you should reveal this.)
[Edit]: If you mean all these mannerisms to be taken ironically, you run up against the problem that every other automotive journalist does not.
Don’t be the new David E. Davis, Jr., P. J. O’Rourke, or yes, Hunter S. Thompson. Resist!
But definitely keep up the good work.
Snob guitarists do not use Roland amps and Electra guitars, they use Matchless amps and PRS guitars.
@H Man: Or something even more boutiquey and outrageous than PRS. -They are almost entry-level for real guitar snobs, who would probably go for something super*(old,rare,custom), or any combo.
Probably like the newer-guy version of a Tom Anderson Guitar Works, just with “Snob” set at 12.
And they all hang out at Rudy’s on 48th street like the 6-string version of Hipster Douchebags.
–No; you don’t want to shop there, even to pass by and look. The skinny-jeaned man-whore desk clerk plays bass for, “a band you’ve probably never heard of” and refers to himself in the Royal “We”.
H Man is right. I’m not trying to impress the readers with thirty-year-old Japanese guitars and $399 amps… just speaking out about products which are important to me (and in both cases, aren’t even in production any more).
Incidentally, I used to race BMX with two guys who worked for PRS. They spent their own money on Nashville Gibsons. Take that as you will.
I have about fifty-five guitars now and most of them are worth way under a grand. Some of them are WAY under a grand. :)
Jack: The bit about how much music gear you can fit in the Panther’s trunk echoes mine in my second Ur-Turn article.
In case you missed it: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/09/ur-turn-trippin-in-a-panther-for-39-hours/
edit: Won’t let me HTML it in Opera.
I have a old Silvertone amp (mfg by Danelectro) that Bruce Ignater, designer and maker of some pretty well regarded boutique amps, checked out and tuned up. I guess that’s the biggest name I can drop.
I do have the business card of Jack Higginbotham, president of PRS, on my dresser. I got it a few years ago when Chevy made a Ron Fellows commemorative Corvette and presented Fellows with a PRS guitar with the same paint and graphics. The PRS folks seem to be car guys.
Steve Kimock, a Marin county based guitar player that I know, has a bunch of very cool guitars including a D’Agostino archtop and a Guitar Lab Explorer. I think he gets his amps from Brown Sound. I was helping the band load up their van after a gig in Ann Arbor and noticed that Steve (an intense gear head when it comes to amps and stuff) traveled with one of those old RCA tube cases that tv repairmen used to have. It unfolded like a doctor’s black bag, and had all sorts of new, used and NOS vacuum tubes.
If God had wanted amps to use transistors, he would have sent Jim Marshall a cheap Japanese radio, not a Fender Bassman.
Silvertone Twin Twelve
Fender Pro Jr (retubed with lower gain preamp tubes to avoid feedback)
Shure Green Bullet (not vintage, w/ volume pot)
CAD HM50 – same as an Astatic JT30 only with a black case and a gold grille.
Original Shaker mic (dynamic)
Somewhere I have a 50’s vintage microphone case that I’ll eventually finish with a mic element and a pot. It’s even got a fin.
And about two dozen assorted harps in a Fender tweed harmonica case. My personal favorites are Suzuki Promasters, but their pretty expensive. They’re heavy, with a comb that’s milled from aluminum, not wood or molded plastic. Definitely not a toy harmonica. Suzuki Blues Masters are also good – play pretty much the same as Lee Oskars, maybe a little brighter tone. Herings are cheap but decent from Brazil, and Huangs are also cheap and decent (though their Chinese sourced harps sometimes have some sharp edges).
Oh, and a custom harp vest my ex made me modeled a bit after John Popper’s.
Jack, I can carry your suitcase on your next trip.
I had a pleasure to have lunch with Jack and being driven by him in both TC and Edge. And in TC I don’t even want to ride shotgun. Back seat is the place to be.
Concerning air travel safety the Israelis do not profile in the sense of racial or ethnic profiling. Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs and while they complain of discrimination, there haven’t been any reports of singling them out just because they’re Arabs when flying in and out of Israel. What the Israelis do is have well trained inspectors go through your luggage while interviewing with all sorts of questions while looking for inconsistencies and signs of deception. You might even get asked about your kindergarten teacher, you never know.
So the issue is well trained people. The government employees aren’t going to be well trained, well unless they’re military and we’d never stand for using the military to do that kind of work. The airports might not be willing to pay for it – though El Al does for their flights that originate outside of Israel.
There hasn’t been even an attempted hijacking of an Israeli plane in close to 40 years. The last attempted hijacking was in 1970.
An El Al 707 piloted by Capt. Uri Bar Lev had just reached 30,000 ft after leaving Amsterdam. The cabin was taken over by two terrorists who announced the hijacking. Stewards in the cabin notified the captain and told him that the hijackers wanted access to the locked cabin. Almost all El Al pilots have been ex IAF, aware of their planes’ capabilities and having the ability to react coolly and quickly (cf: Boyd OODA). Bar Lev told the stewards on the intercom “Sit down, we are not going to be hijacked.” He wasn’t just calming them down, he already had a plan.
They had only just reached cruising altitude, the fasten seat belt signs were still lit. He wanted the stewards to be in their seats so that the only people standing in the cabin were the hijackers. He then brought the nose down and did a negative G dive, throwing the hijackers to the floor. One tried to set off a grenade and was killed by an armed marshal, the other was restrained.
Jack, this is cool stuff to read, how many tyres still left for the 911s?
in any case don’t get used to riding in the back, remember the 911’s back seat is just there for show…but being driven certainly has its benefits at times…
“As far as I can tell, the purpose of the TSA is to address the inconvenient racial and religious aspects of modern terrorism by enraging white, Protestant Americans to the point that one of them blows up an airport, thus eliminating the proven advantage of Israeli-style profiling and returning us to the rainbow wonderland of imaginary political thought.”
I love digression.
Then you must really enjoy my pieces. “… but I digress” will be my epitaph.
You should come to China. The pat-downs are usually performed by women. Just for that, I keep a coin in the pocket.
This is the only country where I say: “Goodie! We’ll be going through security now!”
And you can rank the service of a border agent from one to five. I don’t know what will happen if you just give a 1, but you can.
Isn’t there such a thing as hands-free word processing-by-dictation? One could drive and write at the same time…conceivably.
Damn you guys. I just bought one last night. 1994, LT1+tow package, leather (no cracks!), all power, everything works and rust-free, 145K miles, $3K. Woody sides and all. Awe-some.
If anything could ever get close to being a roadgoing equivalent of a small airliner, this is it. Complete with individual map lights and climate control.
WHooooooooooooooooo hoooooooooooooooooo! B-body, BOF, RWD love. Enjoy it while you can, those dinosaurs are fast disappearing. BTW I always thought of them more like driving an aircraft carrier than an airliner, or perhaps like piloting Amtrak’s “Southwest Chief.”
WELL DONE.
Congratulations Alex, enjoy. Life’s too short to drive crowdcans anyway. :)
Take it for lots of road trips if you can. Those 350s will pile up the miles with ease; 145,000 miles is second wind for a SBC. Take it from me, I’ve owned a few.
My wife and I are traveling to Florida from my homeland of Canada in Feb. Traveling back has me concerned. Not really for myself, per say, but for my wife. This supposed lack of detail in the images is BS, especially for a lady like my wife who is quite well endowed in the chest department. She does not want to go through the scanner but, due to her bust size does not want to be patted down either. I have seen the tapes on how women are patted down and, if they have a small chest, its intrusive but no more than it would be for a guy. But, as we found out when I patted her down to TSA specs, you could do the female pat down and not find a knife hidden in her cleavage. So what happens is the TSA will pull their shirts down and look in there, or shove a hand in there. One woman is suing as the TSA pulled her shirt down and her breasts fell out in front of all the other passengers. Don’t know what to do. I certainly don’t want someone looking at her naked but also don’t want to risk a cleavage-gate pat down either. As for me, I’m with you Jack. I am going to stick my hand in my pocket and “jiggle my keys” before my pat down. Scanner be damned, if you want to get an idea of what my junk looks like you are EARNING it buddy.
Let’s remember that as dunderheaded and mindlessly bureaucratic as the TSA statists are, the blame for this flows mostly to the jihadis.
Gotta mostly disagree with you on this. The jihadis are entirely to blame for their own actions, not ours. As terrorists go, they succeeded wildly; no small thanks US. WE have chosen to be afraid and the chickenhawks are coming home to roost.
But I digress…
Ah-ha. These body scanners do nothing but violate people’s rights. Adam Savage of Mythbuster fame went though a body scanner and forgot that he had two 12 inch steel razor blades in his jacket. Got on the plane with them. Start watching at the 1 minute mark….