I subscribe to Edward Hasbrouck's newsletter, and he's been following and commenting on the Amazing Race. He wrote The Practical Nomad, and is an ex airtrek agent who must hold at least a PhD in travel. I don't agree with everything he has to say re planning an RTW (for example, recommends consolidator tickets not alliance tickets), and his politics are way left of mine. But the guy is incredibly knowledgeable and the newsletters are extremely valuable as they analyze what the racers do and should have done to maximize their options.

Hasbrouck gave a speech in Sacramento,
( http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001652.html ) and made some comments partially excerpted below about whether we are living in a very short window of opportunity for affordable world travel. With what I percieve as a paradigm shift in our country (will America as I knew her cease to exist?), Hasbrouck's comments really struck a nerve. What do you think? Would love to hear thoughts of other FTers on this.

Here are a few copied and pasted comments.

"Until recently, few people could afford to travel. Everyone else relied on what was written by those few adventurers who returned from far-off lands, whether that was Marco Polo bringing descriptions of the East back to Europe, Zhang Qian bringing news of Western lands back to China, or Mark Twain describing the strange land and stranger customs of California to readers several weeks' journey away back East.

Only within my lifetime has that changed. 50 years ago, the cheapest plane ticket across the Atlantic or the Pacific cost the equivalent of what a ticket on the Concorde would later cost. Today, for a month's wages, an ordinary American worker can fly to almost anywhere in the world and back. Travel is cheaper, easier, and faster than ever in history.

What will the future of travel, and travel writing, be like, in a world of oil depletion and global warming? Has air travel, in particular, already passed its peak of affordability?

Will our descendants look back on us as part of only 2 or 3 generations in all of human history, past, present, or future, who have the chance to see the world, meet its people, and learn about it through our own direct experience? What are we doing to take advantage of this precious opportunity?"