Stay in your fortress —
travelling is a real drag

I TRIED a new kind of holi-
day this year. I didn’t ven-
ture an inch further from
the back yard than I
absolutely had to.

Originally, The Beloved One
and I had planned to join some
friends of ours in Hong Kong and
travei together to Bali, despite the
fact that we would be more than
halfway along an archipelago
leading to East Timor, where the
Indonesian government his been
doing some outrageously brutal
things.

[have changed locations for
holidays before. For instance, in
1989, when we cancelled a
planned trip to Fiji because of the
imposition of military rule in an
ugly little ethnic dispute.

But the truth is, there was more
to it this time than trying to be
politically correct. I frankly didn’t
feel like going anywhere, especial-
ly not the tropics in the middle of
the hottest time of year, at least a
dozen flights to get us there and
back, frenzied stop-overs in places
like Jakarta, taxis, line-ups, ciga-
rette smoke, sweat, delays,
crowds, stress, stress, stress.

So I did an unusually intelli-
gent thing. I decided to stay home.

It was true that ¥ lined up some
writing work to do, but it was a
project I had been wanting to get
at for years, and which, therefore,
wasn’t a burden. To
the contrary, it was
what I really wanted
to do: sit in my little
cabin and write,
write, waite. .

Of course, I ago-
nized over whether
this was a side-effect
of growing older, and
therefore was a ten-
dency to be fought
/ against tooth-and-
nail, like some .—
women (and men, I’m
sure) fight the arrival of grey
hairs, ripping them out of the
flesh, hitting them with chemicals
that probably cause cancer, but
generally succeeding in staying in
a state of denial.

No, so far as I could in good
faith figure, I really did want to
stay home and hang out in the
back yard and just write. .

This was the alternative, after
all, to travelling halfway around
the planet seven miles up in the
air, zapping down into insanely
complicated airports, where your
747 has to hang a 90-degree turn
at a certain point on the famous
final descent, and then you have to
get through customs, where they
rip even grandmothers’ underwear

apart looking for drugs, and then
they are liable to curtly order you
over to different line-ups at gun-
point, having, thankfully, decided
not to exercise the option of hav-

ob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

ing some goon or goonness put a
finger up your bum in the name of
national security.

The truth is, | hate having to
deal with people in uniform at the
best of times, unless they are
directly involved in the task of res-
cuing me or my family or friends
or pets from some terrible disaster
— like downed power lines or
tidal waves or being hit by a car or
someone starting their lawnmower
up far too early in the morning on
a weekend. Or else escorting us
from Point A to Point B because
we can’t get there on our own, and

66 I’ll senda flare

every once in a while.

How about you? 99

absolutely need them.
* Otherwise, I'll live my life and
you and your rules live yours.

That’s my view.

Travelling to other countries
does expose you to direct contact
with lower-level bureaucrats in
uniform. They are all potential
fascisti straddling the line between
the laws of one country and those
of another. While the countries
may have similar if not identical
laws, all equally crazy, if nothing
else, you now have the possibility
of two jurisdictions warring over
the right to determine your fate,
Not just one.

As the f Ching says, avoid
petty officials whenever you can.

So that was one good, old-fash-
ioned reason for staying home.

The other, which is much-dis-
cussed in the travel pages, is the
effect of the recession, or at least
inflation elsewhere, which is keep-

1994 ISUZU RODEO
recent stock arrival at
NORTH AMERICA’S

ing the numbers of Canadians
staying in Canada at some kind of
record or near-record high.

Camping in the great Canadian
outdoors is big again, although,
inevitably, the line-ups at camp
sites are horrendous, by all
reports.

Ihave to go on what the reports
say because | sure us hell didn’t go
anywhere to find out for myself.

You couldn't budge me with
wild horses. And it is not just the
fear and loathing of line-ups al fer-
ries and terminals, accidents, con-
struction, crashud tickel comput-
ers, or zero-tolerance borders.

Have you looked around at the
world beyond Canada lately?

‘There was a blistering heat-
wave in Europe this summer. Over
therc, they don't have air-condi-
tioning, the downside of having

funky old horse stables for houses, °

In the Czech Republic, it was
so hot that rail tracks bent out of
line, and a speed timit of 60 kilo-
metres an hour was ordered. Water
got se warm in the Risine and
Weser rivers that the turbines at
power plants were close to having
to shut duwn.

In Poland, more than 500 peo-
ple — a record — drowned while
trying to find some place to ga
swimming.

Meanwhile, Kamloops and
Penticton were pretty hot, eh? It
was the third-worst record in B.C.

last time I looked, and
rising. If things seem
to have been dry late-
ly, well, wait for it.
The oft-repeated
prediction that the
global climate is heat-
ing up rapidly is com-
ing true before our
very eyes, even if
there are still idiots
who are in denial.
How does this fit
in? I say that as the
discomforts of travel
increase in parallel proportion to
the expense, the sheer numbers of
people travelling is bound to go
down.

And, shortly after legislated
ground-level smog-reduction tar-
gets are activated in places like
California, it is a fairly safe bet
that airlines, with their dispropor-
tionately large contribution to
greenhouse gases, are going to
find themselves handicapped by
increasingly stringent international
anti-pollution regulations. Up goes
the price of travel, down goes the
number of people who can afford
it.

Ergo, the more we stay close to
home.

Cocooning? Forget it.
Fortressing, | say. Hunkering
down. Piling up the sandbags and
squinting over the top. 1°U senda
flare every once in a while. How
about you?

Sunday, August 21, 1994 - North Shore News - 7

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