COLUMN: It Should Be All Fun

By Tobin Barnes

            We went to Europe last summer. It was our third time.

And like the other two, it was fun.

            But it’s not all fun.

            They should make trips to Europe, amongst other things, all fun. That would be a big improvement. Life would be better that way. Yeah, more enjoyable.

            They could start with the flights over and back. There’s no way you can call those fun.

            Matter of fact, they’re a major pain in the butt, literally and figuratively.

            It starts off with the price.

You spend about as much for the flight as what you end up spending in Europe. They need to fix that. The relative value is really skewed. Same price for each but really different perceptions toward the two things you’re getting: buyer’s remorse on one hand, glee on the other. Sure, you’re getting transportation, but come on.

            Then there’s the subject of comfort during these eight-to-nine hour flights. The sense of comfort in those seats lasts…oh…about fifteen minutes.

After fifteen minutes, you realize that the initial impression of actual foam was an illusion. And even during that first fifteen minutes you were suspicious.

            What they call seats should instead be loosely called seats. They should tell you that you’re renting the approximation of a seat. Now that would be truth in advertising.

            You can sit in these airline seats and that’s about it. Any other usual attributes of seats are completely missing from them.

            In regular real-life seats you don’t scrunch your seat right up against a wall of another seat. You don’t have your nose stuck in the back of a bunch of plastic.

No way. You’d move your seat back to allow a sense of space, a feeling of perspective, and an aura of well-being. You wouldn’t care to insert yourself into the impression of being in an ancient Roman rowing galley.

            Such is not the case with airline seats. You allow yourself to become a virtual sardine.

And those seatbelts are redundant. With or without them, you are going nowhere once shoehorned into your so-called seat, especially since you also have to deal with the placement of headphones, a pillow, and a blanket that they supposedly provide you to enhance your experience.

            Along with all the other accoutrements you brought to while away the time, you are now no longer a traveler, but rather a heaped-up stash.

            Add to all this an eight-hour layover in Chicago on the way back and you’ve got a couple of whimpering puppies protesting about the cruelty of life.

            So, no, it’s not all fun.

            But then I guess you’ve got to consider what inter-continental travel used to be like. Not only did trips take weeks, but there was seasickness, disease, shipwrecks, piracy, and the strong possibility that you might not even make it to your destination alive.

            People were tougher then than they are now.

            We’re wimps now. We whine when even the least little thing isn’t hunky-dory and all fun.

So, hey, there’s only one solution. They need to continue working on things so everything, like trips to Europe, are all fun and nothing but the fun.