Doom & Gloom or is it ...

I guess sometimes the world just has to slow down, especially when things happen that they have no control over, earthquakes in china and now a massive volcanic eruption at the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland.  Things beyond our control, the fascinating thing about this is, we get to see it - can you imagine when the last eruption happened in the 1800's, how did people get to hear about it?  And even see it or see images of it, wow - so flights have been grounded, I know this is catastrophic for a lot of people but we have to look at the up side of these things as well.

It got me thinking, what happens if this volcano does carry on erupting for the next 2 or more years and all flights are grounded, will people look at other forms of transportation maybe tele porting (beam me up Scottie), or do we have to go back to the way our forefathers travelled and go by boat.   My father travelled a lot in his life time, the first successful flight by the Wright brothers was in 1903, and the first passenger carrying aircraft was in 1935, flights would also have been very expensive.  So seeing as my father was born round 1896 and travelled to Australia in the 1920's and also travelled to various places during the first world war he would have had to have gone by ship.  He also travelled to Europe, and in those days the ships probably didn't go as fast as they do today, so a trip from say England to South Africa would have probably taken a few weeks.  I am sure it would probably take less than a week today.

To get back to my original point, we would all have to start travelling by boat or drive.  Hmmm how long would it take to drive from Ireland to South Africa, and which route would be the safest, that would be a logistical nightmare trying to plan that, I think we'll go by ship - but as it will take about a week to get there and a week to get back, we could probably only spend a few days.  And Australia, oh my word you would just arrive, say hi to everyone at the port and get back on the ship to sail home.  Then of course there is the matter of getting your sea legs, over coming bad weather at sea and the boredom and of course the expense of spending all this time on a ship.

I think for the moment we will just stay here! By the way this amazing photograph was taken by the National Post.