"Has the good Professor previously revealed a fear of flying?"asks Oso Negro, in "The Blue Sky Café." "Three hours on the plane, no matter how demeaning the screening process, surely beats two days each way in the car in the dead of winter,"

I answer:

It's much more than 3 hours, when you count getting to the airport, parking, slogging with luggage into the terminal, the wait that you have to build in to avoid missing the plane, the possible delays, in Madison and (especially) in Chicago (the only available connection), including the horrible delays that involve getting kicked out of the airport and needing to go to a hotel and then come back 4 hours later. I once had my 3-days-before Christmas flight cancelled, automatically rescheduled a day later, then had that flight cancelled, and found out that they had no flight that could get me to Austin for Christmas. That was the first Christmas I ever spent alone.

Quite aside from the time, it's that you are pushed around and crowded with other people continually. I don't have a fear of flying. I hate the conditions of disorder and complexity and indignity. I don't want to be treated that way.

And I have a car.

A car gives me flexibility about when to leave. I can pick good weather days, or give up on the whole trip at the last minute if I want. With a car, I have control and freedom. Yeah, it probably takes longer, but I am a free citizen in the United States of America. I'm comfortable in my safe and luxurious car (an Audi TT), and I've got satellite radio to fill my quiet space and cause my thoughts to roam.

I listened to a great TED Talk Hour about memory, and then I had an hour-long (hands-free) phone conversation with Meade, which included his stories about walking around Madison, which jogged my memory about the memory show, and we talked about all that for 70 miles.

The mental space of a long drive is a very different place. You can't get there by plane.

I'm 2/3 of the way home.

At last night's "Greetings from Kansas" post, I was complaining about driving in Austin:

My most harrowing driving experience was yesterday, just trying to get downtown in Austin. The highways there are evil, and there are local fuckers doubling down on the evil, making it a nightmare. I will never drive in Austin again. Whatever good there is in Austin is severely diluted by the hell of its roads.

With Chef Mojo's prompting "Austin drivers are just plain mean," I practically broke down:

It's so crushing, the feeling that one's fellow human beings are assholes. It makes life hard. I am trying not to be like that. I move over to let cars into the lane that is "mine." There are a hundred opportunities, every day, to show another person that you care how they feel. Maybe that's the most important thing we do. Maybe that's how God is keeping score. I won't specify the things I've done because of that thought, but please, people, think about it. Why are we here?

Ken in tx said:

Austin traffic is intimidating. Whenever I can get her to do it, I let my wife drive. She is more aggressive than I am. I had to use the GPS to find the driver's license office and the boat registration place. You got the Mopac expressway, the Capital of Texas Highway, the Ben White Expressway, and I-35, all with spaghetti junction intersections. I once lived in DC and survived that, but I was younger and thought I was invincible.

Yikes! I need a trigger warning before "Mopac expressway, the Capital of Texas Highway, the Ben White Expressway, and I-35." I've got PADS. Post-Austin Driving Syndrome.

Fortunately, Meade said:

[T]ake comfort knowing only one more day on the road and then you'll never have to drive again ever.

Which made me think of "Chauffeur Blues":

Going to let my chauffeur
Going to let my chauffeur
Drive me around the
Drive me around the world
Then he will be my lover boy, I will be his girl

Only a half day left on the road, and I'm going to see my baby tonight.

... you can talk. I've got to drive for 9 hours.

That's question #17 on the "What is your social class?" test we were talking about yesterday. There are 2 options: "I don't care for the twang" and "I like it!" Maybe I'm over-precise, but I always take the form of the options seriously. What are you supposed to do if you don't like country music enough to buy anything or but you do listen occasionally as you pop around on the satellite radio as you drive all day? What if what you "don't care" about is what "the twang" is supposed to mean?

I drove from Austin, Texas to Emporia, Kansas yesterday, and I mostly listened to talk channels (like PRX and NPR Now), but I sampled the music channels part of the time, and I usually don't listen to a whole song, but I stuck with Trisha Yearwood's "Walkaway Joe" until the end. I didn't notice any "twang" not to "care for." So I picked "I like it!" on the quiz. Was that why I missed out on being "upper middle class"?

The gospel music question had answers with the opposite problem. Instead of making me want to say "neither," it made me want to say "both." The answers for gospel music are: "It can be wonderful" and "I'm not a fan." It's easy to concede that it "can be wonderful," even you think it's mostly overdone and too histrionically religious. And you can enjoy it a fair amount without seeing yourself as "a fan."

What do you think of Althouse's analysis of multiple choice questions?

Her analysis is an intentional, annoying spoof of the way lawyers read things.

Althouse overcompensates neurotically for her inability to appreciate the music of the people.

She oughta know, she's the queen of polls with options other than the one I want.

About what I'd expect from the breakfast room of a motel in Emporia, Kansas.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: If you can't see the buttons to vote, go here.

A headline so good it may trigger your click-bait resistance, but the article (in The New Yorker) delivers.

"If not, they're going to just want us to act up so [police] can pull out their toys on us again... I learned that we have to stand up and that you can't get nowhere with violence but you can always move people without it.

Said Joshua Williams, 19, last September. Williams, "[o]ne of the most frequently quoted and photographed Ferguson protesters was charged Saturday with setting fire to a Berkeley convenience store last week." Court documents say he has confessed to the crime.

"Josh is one of the young activists, and all of us have taken close to him. We got to know his heart, and he got to know ours," said Bishop Derrick Robinson, of Kingdom Destiny Fellowship International. "He's a great kid, an educated kid, a child who knows what he wants and is very active in the community."

"Though members of this group are not the most accurate judges of others' emotions, they do have a high faith in people's basic decency, and a commitment to raising healthy, curious, and imaginative children. Your people eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, eschew cigarettes, and live in homes full of books. You have vast and eclectic tastes in music, which likely exclude country, gospel, rap, and heavy metal. In fact, you identify so strongly with your own individual tastes, that you may resent it a bit when friends impinge upon your discoveries."

Meade took the "What is your social class?" test. I'm blogging this before taking the test. Will update to show my results.

UPDATE: MIDDLING.

Your habits and perspectives most resemble those of middle-class Americans. Members of this group tend to be gentle and engaging parents, and if they're native English speakers they probably use some regional idioms and inflections. Your people are mostly college-educated, and you're about equally likely to beg children not to shout "so loudly" as you are to ask them to "read slow" during story time. You're probably a decent judge of others' emotions, and either a non-evangelical Christian, an atheist, or an agnostic. A typical member of this group breastfeeds for three months or less, drinks diet soda, and visits the dentist regularly. If you're a member of this group, there's a good chance that you roll with the flow of technological progress and hate heavy metal music.

Somewhere in the middle of Kansas, halfway between Austin, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin, your steadfast blogger has holed up for the night. You may now rest easy, knowing that the aggressive drivers of Texas did not kill me, the icy highways of Oklahoma did not waylay me, and the speedy interstate they call 35 did not lure me onward into that drive-'til-dawn madness that gripped me in my younger years.

ADDED: It's really too early to sleep. 7:53. But I'm tired of all the driving, and eager to make the end of today so I can get back out there tomorrow and be home again. What do you do in this situation, alone in the hotel? The car is there, the distance is what it is, but sleep must have its place. Being awake in the hotel is not much different from being in the car holding the steering wheel. And yet, good sense says, you must stay put. No more forward movement until dawn... or near dawn. These useless hours, pre-sleep, alone, somewhere in Kansas.