Without Feathers

 Allow me to begin with this point of transparency: I have been, for most of my life, excited by the prospect of owning my own flying car. Each time an article is published somewhere about the potential availability of such a vehicle friends and relatives fill my inbox with the details. Is this the one? Are we finally ready for Dave to take to the skies? 

In a word, No. I remain almost exclusively earthbound. This is also largely attributable to the fact that my father suffered his own sudden deceleration trauma some years ago after he made one too many attempts to fly without his own set of properly assigned wings. 

Still, I remain a fan of Bernoulli's Principle and mankind's continued attempts to conquer the air in the same way they have the land and the sea. In, if you'll pardon the pun, principle anyway. An example of my frustration with this overreach was found in the article I read about John Travolta's three private jets. 

Three. All a part of the lavish lifestyle afforded the man who brought us Vinnie Barbarino. And the Boy In The Plastic Bubble. And a couple other things. Now, because he has managed his portfolio so very well he can live in a place where he can drive his plane, one of them anyway, right to his front door. When questioned about the wisdom of owning three jet aircraft, he explained, "It's a practical reason. I'm a pilot myself. … If I have one jet that's inoperable, I have one to back it up." While maintaining several aeronautical ratings, Mister Travolta seems to have lost a bit of his mathematics. That third plane? And what about this word problem: Private jets produced up to nineteen point five million metric tons of planet-warming gas in 2023, which is equivalent to the output of as much as one hundred seventy-seven  passenger cars or nine heavy-duty highway trucks. 

He can afford it, right? 

Well how about those civil servants out there, breaking their backs to support the public interest? While this public school teacher scraped together five thousand dollars to purchase a pre-owned electric car to be charged from the energy gathered by our solar panels, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has been given not one but two luxury Gulfstream jets to help her get around the country oppressing people. Not that the United States government isn't awash in aircraft that she could call up in a wink to fly her to her next photo op, but having these two planes at her disposal at all times means that if one is inoperable, she has one to back it up. For the bargain basement price of one hundred seventy-two million dollars for the pair. In case you were wondering, emitted over two hundred fifty-three metric tons of carbon dioxide in under two months, which is fifteen times the average U.S. citizen's annual footprint.

Of course we all know that there isn't anything average about Kristi. Or John. 

Or the extreme weather events experienced via climate change. I'll stick to my bike, thank you.