First Impressions

by JS

Ann Arbor is much more the pure college town than Austin with its differing communities of state capital affairs and high technology shadow to San Diego. The University of Michigan spreads spider-like over this place, and while perhaps not much larger than the University of Texas whose limited perimeter is more a function of the compact layout than acreage, this campus is firmly situated as the point of this whole thing. All the perverse social and commercial structures that service high education flow naturally out of that fact.

The weather is also much more temperate this time of year. When I left Austin the temperature had risen to the point where leaving things like CDs in the car became something of a dodgy bet of the power of manufacturing over the heat trap of a car with only spurious clouds for shade. Austin will only get hotter. Of course during the winter, the temperance reverses, like a little manic version of the polarity of the planet, oscillating as it does over geologic time.

In many ways my wife and I are in some mutation of the bi-coastal marriage, trading the east/west gradient for a more primal form of gradient — temperature. We’re not lawyers or entertainers, engaged in some indulgence across the east/west cultural (and more importantly economic) irregularities, emitting greenhouse gases in strips across the Midwest, a coastal elite canvas for some ephemeral striped flag. Instead I’ll be traveling south, experiencing for myself a kind of mini-summer shift every time, one mechanical goose on a plane full of mechanical geese.

I drove north to get here. The two day drive was longer in terms of contiguous mileage than any other drive I’ve ever done. I spent slightly more on fuel and hotel than I would have flying, but at least I wasn’t partially responsible for injecting my car’s emissions into the upper atmosphere, where they do the most damage. When I was at ITA Software, a smart engineer gave a presentation about the relative environmental impact of driving versus flying. He concluded that flying is slightly better for single travelers, but with groups, taking a single car had far less impact. The main distinguishing characteristic wasn’t fuel usage per passenger, but the damage multiplier of exhausting right into the sensitive air at 32,000 feet, a kind of central line injection of carbon gases, versus the peripheral damage of a simple car exhaust.

I did not drive at the optimal gas sipping speed of 55 mph, but I did manage to check my tire pressure before leaving, so there is that.

Normally, I loathe long trips, but Anastasia introduced the idea of listening to audio books during these journeys. On the way up I listened to Watchmen by Ian Rankin and Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. The former, a very British classic spy novel, was entertaining fare of a sort that did not require close listening. I could tune in and out without losing much of the plot. The latter memoir is the most insightful view into the craft and humanity of comedy. I found it so captivating as to prevent any effort to tune out. Steve Martin’s effortless prose and voice are perfect for the format, and in this case I suspect the audio book is actually the superior storytelling modality.