The death of the mystery of travel

At the airport today. Now that they ask you to kick your shoes off when you arrive, it feels more like home. The TSA just needs to offer us tea at the security checkpoint too. So I'm sitting here in my socks, watching airplanes take off, laptop plugged in, headphones on. With my eyes closed (nothing reduces eyestrain like typing with one's eyes closed), I can fool myself into thinking I'm at home right now.

I've been working on this setup for quite a while now. Decent headphones, the laptop, a nice travel mug: it's all part of my ongoing efforts to make myself entirely location-independent. Drop me off in Caracas and I'm ready to write models and papers. [Yes, Venezuela uses the same voltage.] I've moved approximately once a year every year of my life, so everywhere I go, I have in the back of my mind that it's still temporary, so I shouldn't get too attached to anything weighing more than a few kilos. Not driving has added to this on a different scale: if I'm on the other side of town without some little box that I desperately need, it's an annoyingly long trip to get back to it. If I can't throw it in a bag and take it with me, it's not worth depending on. Back in the day, if you wanted to leave the house or work, that meant doing without certain things; now you never have to make do again.

This thread all began with the camp stove, which is the same mentality for the outback: just `cause you're out in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean that you have to make do without tea. Gosh, solar technology is fast improving, so feel free to bring your laptop too (or at least your palm pilot and keyboard, which I've done). The boring entry from a few days ago was intended to help with making sure your away computer is as much like your home computer as possible.

Or ice camping. You go out into the country, after a heavy snow, where everything is blindingly white and you can't hear anything but that indescribable sound of snow crunching, and then when you stop you can't hear anything at all and you wonder if the entire Earth has fallen off the face of itself. Having found such a spot, where it's nothing but you and white snow and white sky and cold, you take out an axe and start carving in the snow. You can use your tent or you can make yourself an igloo. You can carve chairs for yourself, around the camp stove you bought, and there, you and endless whiteness can have tea.

I remember the first time that I'd flown as a conscious person (as opposed to as an infant), which was in high school. I spent the entire flight glued to the window---especially the take-off, which is one of the greatest achievements of humanity that you can literally feel in your gut. Now, shoeless, I sleep through them. If I am awake, I'm back on the laptop, pretending I'm at home.

Oh, I know that travel is supposed to be transformative and eye-opening, but I've found ways to bypass all of that unpleasantness and potential change. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, even travel to the most distant lands can feel just like another day at home, albeit colder, warmer, or with people who speak English with an odd accent.