In Appreciation Of The Jet Plane

Here’s a story of 200 years and 2,000 miles.

West Palm Beach, Florida, to Queens, New York-airport to airport–is a little over a thousand miles. Today, I did it in three hours, give or take. There was a teevee embedded into the back of the headrest in front of me, so I could have watched sitcoms or chat shows while we cruised at 30,000 feet. A soft beverage was brought to me free of charge, and I had the option of purchasing booze. A small bag of snacks, too. (I could have brought my own meal onto the plane, as well; the short length of the flight meant that nothing would spoil or rot.) Above my seat, which was slim but not intolerable, was a blower with cool air I could PSSSSHHHHH full-blast or shut off entirely. I didn’t need to use the bathroom, but I could have.

And I didn’t die, either. Humans did not evolve to spend much time at 30,000 feet. First off: gravity disagrees. Gravity really, truly wants you on the ground. If placed at that height, say by the Hand of God, you would immediately plunge towards the earth. This would not be true if you were a member of certain species of vulture or goose, but–it is safe to assume as you are currently reading a satirical essay on the internet–you are a human being, and thus incapable of even the most rudimentary forms of flight. Some animals like the flying squirrel or sugar glider can almost-sorta-fly; some spiders splay their webs into the air in huge fan-shapes that catch the wind, and they float along with the breeze. Cats have developed a typically high-handed defense against gravity, in that they simply refuse to acknowledge a fall. Not humans, though. We side with the majority of our brethren megafauna and and sizzle towards the ground at top speed with absolutely no way to stop or even curb the proceedings. I mean, you could flap your arms if you wanted to, but you’ll just look dumb.

From 30,000 feet, it would take two minutes to get home.

Second of all: there is no air at 30,000 feet and it is colder than a failed Everest summiter. Mostly because the summit of Everest is around 30,000 feet. That’s a little over five miles, or roughly a tenth of the way to Outer Space, but the temperature doesn’t fall linearly: it drops exponentially with the big dive at the beginning because “temperature” isn’t really a thing, just a useful benchmark, and what is actually happening is that the air molecules are becoming more and more spread apart and thus interacting less and less, which creates less energy. Basically, the atmosphere is breaking up with itself.

I don’t know if any of that was quite right.

Leave me alone. I’m explaining nature.

You were a terrible science student.

And they make the best science teachers.

I see we didn’t get any more coherent during our little vacation.

We did not. To recap: a human being at 30,000 feet is soon to be a human dying at 30,000 feet. He will either plummet to the earth, which causes death, or she will freeze to death, which also causes death. Freezing to death, in fact, is a 100% fatal disease. Also: no air.

But the modern airliner solves all these problems. Pressurized cabins so you can breathe and your nose doesn’t turn black and fall onto your tray table. And the cabins are attached to wings with honking-big engines on ’em that scoot the contraption along at 500 mph. But here’s the best part: they almost never fall out of the sky. It’s so rare that we hear when it happens in foreign countries. When was the last time you heard about an international car crash? Lady Diana, that’s when. And before that: Grace Kelly. Plane goes down from Malaysia? All over the news, even though 90% of Americans could not find Malaysia on a map. TotD is usually a place of scorn and cynicism, but not here: the planes work. If you round off the statistics even slightly, then commercial aircraft never crash. You’re safer in a 707 at cruising speed and altitude than you are on a staircase. Or in your shower. You are incomparably more likely to survive the experience than had you driven even a fraction of the distance.

One might, with prevailing winds and smooth air, hope to make the trip from West Palm Beach in Florida to Queens in New York in roughly three hours. Comfort, safety, speed.

In 1818, if you wanted to go from West Palm Beach to Queen, you couldn’t. First of all: there was no West Palm Beach. There were Miccosuccee and Seminole and maybe Creek, but no Whites. (West Palm Beach is not Palm Beach. Palm Beach is a sliver-shaped island right off the coast where the worst White people America has traditionally winter. It is unknown whether the Seminole sent their most dickish citizens to the island regularly.) But let’s say you were some sort super-explorer guy, but not in a Problem Attic kind of way. Maybe you are a lady. The important bit is that you’re a super-explorer: you can survive outdoors with just your knife and wits, and you know how to cover ground well, and maybe you can do up a canoe from a tree. You’re outdoorsy.

So: you’re stranded a titch above the Keys and have to get to Long Island. Best way: paddle up the coast in the canoe you did yourself up from the tree. Do it in the late summer, bring along a couple of friends from college. Really see America, y’know? See it. You could cover a hundred miles a day easy, and put in when the day got too hot for the boating or the weather turned. The directions are simple enough: keep the land on your left and keep the land in sight. That’s 12 days, minimum

Worst way: every overland route because all of them required climbing Florida’s endless shaft. Enthusiasts: Florida is Dagobah. Forget the Florida Man fellow who brings us such delight. Take people out of the equation. The land–the terrain and climate combined–is intensely hostile to humans. Alligators (and this is a fact that is not very well known) are clever and can devise traps and puzzles. There are also legends of gators impersonating early settlers’ wives in order to lure them closer to the lake’s edge. Several grasses were stinging, and at least one tree would wing coconuts at your head when you weren’t looking. The Spanish thought they owned Florida, but they had only ever gotten a toehold, and then the United States took it over in the 1820’s, but it was all still wild until the start of the 20th century when the Army Corps of Engineers drained half of the peninsula back into the sea via the mighty canals, making life–for the middle-class American–bearable in wide stripes up and down the coast. But in 1818, there were no road and no trails, just swamp and monsters and swampmonsters until you got to Savannah, Georgia. From there, you could arrange transport via a series of coaches, or at least a series of drivers: no one man would know the entire path of backways and farm paths that made up the highway system of the time. Going would get easier around Virginia. Roughly calculated, this method of travel would take a trillion years, and you would most likely die.

Now do it twice.

2,000 miles in a weekend, from 200 years ago until today. It is amazing what we can do when we try.