Flight decked Column By Ray Barrington I believe I can fly ... but I won't This week, my wise wife and I have been getting ready for our regular road trip to see her family in Georgia. Yes, we're driving. Oh, we might have flown, and occasionally have in the past. It would give us more time with her folks. (Whether or not that's a good thing can be argued, but it's probably good.) But the flights haven't been that satisfactory, and with recently purchased wheels (a used minivan), we're ready to roll. Flights not satisfactory? Well, let's take a look back. Two Georgia trips ago, we flew into Atlanta. On the way back, we missed the connection in Detroit and had to stay the night. Then, two years ago, we flew into Nashville. On every change of planes, my wife - a round-faced, friendly Southern girl, with no facial hair - was stopped and gone over by the gate guards. OK, once, I can understand. Maybe even once on the way out and once on the way back. But after changing planes and not leaving the airport? But we put up with it; it's the way of the world nowadays. What's strange is that she was checked four times; I wasn't checked once. The trip down was uneventful, but the trip back ... Let's start with the car rental. After handing back the keys, I found that we had left two CDs, purchased on the trip, in the car. By the time we got back, they were gone. Hope the folks at Cheapo Car Rental enjoy country music, the thieving (deleted). And we had to get there several hours before the flight, or pay another day on the car rental. So it's sit around the airport time. Only laundromats are more boring, unless your idea of entertainment is the CNN Airport Network. And while we were waiting during a thunderstorm, the power went out, removing even that bit of "entertainment." (And forcing me to run around in the rain while trying to recover the CDs.) So it's off to Minneapolis. And when we get there, it's another thunderstorm. This forces an even longer delay because the airline isn't going to send its ramp people to stand out in the rain while there's lightning around. Good idea. But now it's nearing midnight, and my wife's job (at the time) required her to be to work at 8 a.m. We finally took off at 2 a.m., during a small break in the thunderstorm. The break ended as we took off. I've been on Space Mountain at Disney World, the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls and have driven in postgame traffic in Madison, but this was the scariest trip of my life. Imagine yourself in a paint mixer with strobe lights on the inside of the can. My wife? She slept through the whole thing, and was rather disappointed she wasn't awake enough to enjoy it. No, this time we're driving. Which brings its own problems. Chicago, for one. It's a nice city on its own terms, which include letting someone else drive. You can either take the tollway or ... take the tollway. Which makes one wonder where the tolls are going; no matter how bad you think our roads are, theirs are worse. From there, it's the farmland of Indiana, which is less interesting than the farmland of Wisconsin, if only because it's Indiana. Kentucky is blessedly brief, and then we hit Tennessee. First off, you start seeing the "See Rock City" signs. Rock City, in Chattanooga, is like Wisconsin Dells, only without the water. Then you hit Nashville, which has an impressive bunch of new downtown buildings, surrounded by huge amounts of sprawl. From there, it's south on I-24 over Monteagle Mountain, which is a nice little thrill ride with rock outcroppings on one side, cliffs on the other, and occasional "brake failure" hills for 18-wheelers at an angle that Evel Knievel would spurn. Finally, you hit Chattanooga, and then the short trip to her family's town. When you consider how much time it takes to get to the airport, miss connections, rent a car and the like, the trip was probably shorter by driving. Barrington is news editor for The News-Chronicle. His column appears here Fridays. Contact him via e-mail at [email protected] or call 432-2941.