On the road

 Road trip. I'm not a huge fan, but I just went to Corpus Christi by car, and now I'll explain why.  If you fly from Waco to Corpus, it's about five hours of airport tedium, waiting in lines, expensive food, airline seats, boarding passes, and all of the rest: ACT to DFW to CRP. None of the flights is more than 45 minutes, but it is a pain in the butt.  So I drove. A colleague and I got in a car and drove. Yes, it was five hours, yes, that's a lot of car time, but we could stop when we wanted, get whatever food or drink we wanted at reasonable prices, and we got to take our time with the scenery. Potty breaks were on our own schedule. Going south from Waco, it's a mixed bag. Some of it is rather beautiful, and a lot of it is very mundane. It was certainly a more human experience--the houses, the towns, the farms, the livestock, the RV parks, the Victorian courthouses, and of course, all the other drivers.  We stayed on blue highways for the most part, eschewing the gladiator-style driving of interstate I35, which, on its best day, is torture and very dangerous. So we drove through a bunch of little towns, boroughs, and villages, some not much more than a wide spot in the road. I would do it again. The humanizing act of staying on the ground was more relaxing, less vexing, and more fun than facing possible delays or cancellations. I felt in control. Needless to say, my nerves were in much better shape after this trip than if we had battled the airports and airlines.