Read Ivy Main's article "Suburban Update"
As we approach another holiday season, it is time once again to address the age-old question: fly or drive? This year the question takes on greater urgency, because airline on-time records are worse than ever, yet the rise in gasoline prices makes driving more expensive than in previous years.
Indeed, with regular gasoline selling for as much as $1.70 per gallon in some areas, we may soon see a time when gasoline costs more than water. Right now this may seem unlikely—we recently paid $1.25 for a pint bottle of water from a vending machine, which works out to $10 per gallon, which means that some newspaper columnists are idiots.
Still, we complain more about the cost of gas than water. We buy gas fifteen or twenty gallons at a time, making us acutely aware of the dollars we just poured into the tank. Water, on the other hand, we tend to buy a bottle at a time, so the expense disappears into that category known as "where does all the money go?"
Yet a typical suburban family may buy three bottles of water per day: Mom and Dad from the sandwich places where they get their lunches at work, and Sister from the vending machine at the high school (she’s on a diet, so that’s her lunch, because the M&Ms, French fries, and the half-of-a-Twinkie she mooches from her friends don’t count). Leaving out weekends and Sister’s summer vacation (during which she saves money by drinking Diet Coke), we calculate the family’s annual costs for bottled water at about $900. From this we conclude that it’s very depressing to figure out the annual cost of anything.
Since we’ve done the calculation, though, we may as well note that this amount is more than the average family is projected to pay in extra home heating costs this winter. Thus it could well be that some homeowners will be so pinched by high oil prices that they won’t be able to afford water any more, but will be reduced to giving their children milk.
When you consider that many bottled waters are just tap water drawn from city supplies, and that gasoline must be refined from crude oil that’s been pumped at huge expense and transported here from halfway across the world, it seems apparent that the price of gasoline is in fact artificially low. Since all oil companies are evil, there must be something really devious going on here. We are pursuing a number of excellent conspiracy theories, all of which we’ve made up, and most of which are so unlikely that we don’t dare publish them for fear people would figure they must be true, on the ground that no one would make up anything so unlikely.
Until we can get to the bottom of the oil price mystery, many Americans may wish to leave their SUVs at home this holiday season and fly to their destination. If you choose to do so, however, be sure to plan for extra time, because everyone knows that airplanes are a much slower form of transportation.
Everyone, that is, except the people who make up airline schedules, who live in a fantasy world of on-time departures and arrivals. What used to be simply optimism on their part has now reached the level of tall tale. Mythmaking is a fine American tradition, of course, but we tend to associate it with irrelevant subjects like history and foreign policy, not important matters like transportation schedules.
Accordingly, gate agents have had to take on a new, more scholarly role, explaining to passengers how to understand an airline schedule as metaphor, even as poetry. Viewed in this light, they assure us, its tenuous relation to reality should be seen not as evidence that these people are bold-faced liars but as a beautiful spiritual statement about mankind’s striving towards perfection.
This is quite a lovely thought, and you will want to bear it in mind next time you are told that your flight to Portland, Maine is cancelled, the next one is oversold, and the crate containing your dog has just been shipped to Portland, Oregon. Also, that the airline won’t take responsibility, because all problems everywhere are weather-related, since it’s raining in St. Louis.
Like airline employees, we should look on the bright side. Most people eventually arrive at their destination, and relatively few suitcases, dogs and unaccompanied minors become permanently lost. Also, once you’re on board a plane, you can expect to be treated to a small bag of pretzels, or perhaps a nice party mix, which will compensate you for the hours you just lost.
And not only that, they give out bottled water for free.