by Peter Selgin

---

Ever notice how as with all things in T.V. commercials, travel is sanitized? Made to look simple, clean, comfortable - even convenient? How, in ads for airways or cruise lines, you are always either here or there, with nothing more aggravating or unpleasant than a patch of weatherproof sky or ocean in between? And in all those car commercials, how one never drives through any but the most pristine landscape, with the road freshly blacktopped and empty, and the autumn foliage at its peak of color.
Don't believe it. Don't believe any of it. That road is paved with lies. In fact, that road doesn't exist.
Nor do those patches of weatherless sky. There is no such thing as travel without pain. "Travelling," wrote Pavese, "is a brutality." The word itself sounds like "travail"
The old Cunard Line brochures used to say, "Getting there is half the fun." But it's not. It's no fun at all. Unless you're drunk. Or on acid. Or under twenty-five, in which case everything falls under the heading experience. No matter how brutal.

The notion that travel is good for you is a myth. Fact: Travel is bad for you. It's bad for your heart, it's bad for your head, it's bad for your bladder, your back and your breath. It's even bad for your skin, and your hair.
It's bad for your sleep, bad for your dreams. It's bad for your gut. And it's especially hard on your feet.
I'm not talking about being in places far away.
I'm not talking about hotels with swimming pools and people waiting on you hand and foot. I'm talking about how you got there. Whether by bus or train, by supersonic transport or ocean liner, by taxi or subway or hot air balloon: it all stinks.

Believe me, Pavese knew what he was talking about.
He understood that, whatever else travel does for you, it makes you feel like shit. That awful, clammy feeling that engulfs your whole being after six or more hours on a jet -- that's your body telling you you should have stayed home and smoked cigarettes.

And yet the myth prevails that travel is glamorous, that it makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise, not to mention younger and better looking. Myth: men who travel are tall and slim with thick, wind-tousled hair, white teeth, squinty blue eyes and a breezy, cheerful, effortless way of communicating with strangers in foreign tongues; getting them to do all sorts of nice things, like not eat them. Picture a combination Peter Mattheisen, George Hamilton, Marlin Perkins and Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton.