101 Things #89 - Redeye Blues

Mrs C. and I once embarked on a holiday that required a very early start. We took the first train from beautiful Ruislip into central London, leaving at some ungodly hour like 5:30am. We don't boast about this. It never crops up in conversation. We do not see it as in any way remarkable. If travel requires it, one makes the effort.

For this reason it is a simple matter to review, reject and consign to oblivion (otherwise known as the dustbin of vainglory, or 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, the suggestion made by Esquire.com that anyone compiling a bucket-list should

Fly the red-eye from Vegas.

Let us leave aside the obvious problem that, in order to fly the red-eye from Vegas, one has to be in Vegas to be begin with, and the hassle of flying there is no small matter, quite apart from finding any good reason to be there.
 
What is the point of it? By "red-eye" is meant any flight leaving late at night or early in the morning. The prices are supposed to be better and the downsides of disturbed sleep and arriving somewhere where everything is shut are the trade-off. And that seems to that. One can, for example, fly Delta leaving at 5:45 and arrive at Los Angeles by 7:00 for a mere $57. Whether LA at that time is worth more than a single bleary look before one hastens back to the airport to go elsewhere is a moot point. And anyway the Delta flight costs the same if you catch the 17:00, arriving at a perfectly sensible 18:24 in LA in time for dinner, so any gloating about the money being saved is gloating wasted.

 After one has done this deed, what then? Is there a Red-eye Club to which one may apply, where yawning businessmen and penniless students can swap stories about sitting outside a locked Starbucks for an hour watching the cleaners? Do they make presentations to Reddest Eye of the Month, the traveller with the greatest sleep deprivation and darkest bags under the eyes? Is there an annual outing to some obscure airstrip, where there is nothing whatsoever to do except sit in a reeking corrugated-iron hanger waiting for the 2:25am back to somewhere with a cafe and working toilets?

The US is a big country and air travel is comparatively cheap and easy. Of course many will choose to fly at unsocial hours. Why on earth taking the red-eye from anywhere should be a bucket-list item is beyond my comprehension. It's just a flight. Of course, any flight away from Vegas has to be a good thing, but let's not boast about it folks, it was your fault for going there in the first place.