A Rain of Frogs

What are your five most important possessions?

By this I mean, if you were leaving earth, say to colonize another planet or something, and could only take five of the things you own with you, what would you take?

I am having a hard time answering this. Much harder than I thought it would be.

My laptop comes to mind. It contains a lot of my creations over the last ten years. But it’s getting long in the tooth, and in all honesty, it is probably the creations, not the laptop, that are the important part.

My bike is my favourite mode of transportation. I think I’d bring it along.

I’d bring my guitar. It’s actually not my guitar, it belongs to my mother. My father bought it for her for her sixteenth birthday. It is in fact somewhat strange that I am the only performing musician in my immediate family, but I am also the only person in my immediate family that doesn’t own his or her own guitar. My dad has one, my mom does, obviously. My sister has one I gave her a long time ago. Her husband has a couple. Sarah has a guitar I gave her for Christmas a few years ago. Regardless, I’d bring along my mother’s guitar, on which I have played more music than on any other instrument I own.

I used to own a boat. I loved that boat. I would have had it on this list, but I no longer own it.

So, I have three things, and the phantom of a fourth. I think that’s enough.

Some called it the Day the Earth Stood Still, others called it the Silence. Lots said the End of the World. Some of the more devout even tried to call it the Rapture, though most backed away from that once the implications had begun to set in. But mostly, those that remained settled on The Big Empty, as in “When the Big Empty came…” You could hear the capital letters in their voices, too.

The world didn’t end with a bang. There wasn’t a nuclear exchange or plague, which is what most people probably imagine when they hear the term “The End of the World.” It wasn’t the sun going supernova or an asteroid hitting the planet or an alien invasion, or any of a million Hollywood endings

The world ended quietly, when almost six billion people simply vanished. On the 8th of May the world was emptied, and nobody knows why.

Nobody knows why the ones that didn’t vanish were left behind, either.

Whenever I am watching a movie that is set in the times before modern air travel, I get this gnawing sense that the romance and adventure of travel has been lost. Because we (at least in the western world) are so focused on destinations and not journeys, we have naturally gravitated toward jet travel as a fast and convenient way to get to the far flung corners of the world.

I am a sailor, so I am used to not getting places in a hurry, am used to seeing the journey itself as the point, as opposed to merely arriving. I enjoy jet travel as much as one can, I guess, and it is nice that Europe is only hours away, since it means Sarah and I can visit her family in the UK, but something is being lost, and I lament it.

Think about that ‘golden age’ of travel, when steamships plied the oceans with hundreds of people aboard, travelling from Europe, North America to wherever. We can improve on it, minimize it’s deficiencies. Sea travel is very much at the mercy of weather, and lots of people get seasick, which are likely part of the reason that air travel so quickly replaced it. What we need is the elegance of sea tavel mixed with some of the conveniences of air travel. What we need is a return to airships.

We have the technology to make airships that don’t blow up any more. This is obviously desirable. They can be made as safe or safer than modern jet aircraft, and can be many times more efficient per passenger mile. It is about 5600kms form New York to London. A modern jet takes around 8 hours to make the trip. It would take an airship 38 to 46 hours to make the same trip.

Instead of being crammed into a tiny seat, airship travellers could be sitting at cafe tables sipping lattés and enjoying the view out the window. They could be gambling at a casino, or sitting in comfortable cinemas watching movies. They could even be standing on glassed in obervation decks, gazing out over the sea and clouds. They could have cabins to sleep in, with actual beds.

It seems a far more civilized way to travel, really. And potentially quite a bit cheaper, since a modern airship could potentially carry a lot more people at a much higher efficiency.

C’mon Richard Branson, can you make it about the journey, and not simply about arriving? Seems like the sort of thing that is right up your alley.

I’ve recently inherited from my father his first sailboat, a 12-foot aluminum dinghy designed by the talented Phillip Rhodes and built by the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan, same as the aluminum foil in your kitchen drawer), most likely some time in the 1970s.

The picture here is from a boat information pamphlet, one of the few pieces of information I’ve been able to find online.

There may be a one-design racing class for this boat, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. Even if there is, I suspect this one would have to be considerably rejigged to qualify, as my father spent considerable time improving the rigging during his ownership.

I’ll have to redo some brightwork, and possibly look into new sails at some point, but the boat is in exceptional condition, and I’m looking forward to punting around on the water with Sarah. The boat is an absolute blast to sail, though one often gets wet when sailing a Petrel.

Commerce Court North, Toronto