I'm becoming one of those grizzled old guys who begins his stories with, "Back in the good old days..."

I'm not happy about this, but at least I don't point a jagged walking stick at my hapless victims to emphasize the key points of my narratives. Yet.

Back in the good old days, we used to arrive at an airport a half-hour before a flight. When running late, we often arrived at the airport scant minutes before scheduled departure. We dashed through airports as part of a well-choreographed, fast-paced, jet-age frenzy. This was back when air travel was exciting: Back when it was supposed to be—and very often was—a very fast way to travel.

What I lament is that the entire system now runs at a languid drumbeat. It isn't just the 45-minute-long line at security. It's as if the whole "arrive at the airport two hours early" mindset suspended the terminal environment in some sort of invisible molasses. Everything from check-in through baggage claim seems to take a lot longer than it used to.

The visual imagery associated with "catching a flight" has evolved from athletes dashing down the concourse to the old man from Laugh-In shuffling through a metal detector. Nobody moves quickly. Nothing happens a minute sooner than it has to happen.

Okay, this is the price we pay for living is a safe society. (When uniformed people force you to take-off your shoes, "free society" isn't an appropriate term anymore.) I'm all for safety, and I've accepted that air travel is slower as a result.

But by-crackie, I'm sure not going to immerse myself in that slow-motion airport glue for a regional journey. (Did I really write, "by-crackie?" Hand me my jagged walking stick.)

According to my math, it just doesn't make sense to fly any trip you can drive in four hours or less. Four hours can be a lot of open-road miles, as in 250 of them. In round numbers, that's a trip from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, or Orlando to Miami, or Dallas to Houston, or Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

The math is based upon this: You need to leave your home or office for the airport 2.5 hours before your flight; your flight is scheduled for 50 minutes, and you'll spend 40 minutes on the distant end claiming baggage, arranging ground transportation, and otherwise escaping the terminal glue. That's four hours total; the same duration as a road trip. Alas, a "short" flight isn't viable from a time management perspective.

Financially, puddle jumping flights make even less sense. Driving 500 miles roundtrip causes you to log $180 worth of mileage (at the IRS mileage rate of $.36). Out of pocket, we're talking something on the order of $35 - $40 in gasoline. On the ledger, if we compare that to the cost of an airline ticket, plus airport parking, plus car rental, the numbers beg for a ground assault on the destination.

Of course, driving has always been an economical choice. Airplanes, however, were time machines; they bought us efficiency that we needed and were willing to pay for. In the new, arrive-two-hours-in-advance paradigm, time isn't always for sale.

Except in areas where highways are pathologically log jammed, the fly/drive decision-making process is skewed toward driving.

The new paradigm isn't all bad. When driving, I need not worry about getting stuck in a middle seat. I'm not harassed by screaming babies, airsick seatmates, or rude flight attendants. I get to hear books-on-tape beginning-to-end. I stop at places that look interesting. I eat well.

I've learned a fascinating trick to avoid spooling-up the miles on my car. Often, I'll rent a car for my road trips, leaving my personal car in the garage for a couple of days of routine maintenance. With unlimited miles and a day rate of less than $40, renting a car is a dirt-cheap way to criss-cross the territory.

I don't always feel good about driving instead of flying. I really want airlines to succeed and thrive, since travel butters my bread. I want to buy airline tickets, since every ticket—and taxes thereupon—fuels an infrastructure that I depend upon.

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