Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones and a small moment of contrition. Last edition I knocked on pickleball pretty hard while on my way to that micro-forest, and then that same weekend I ended up playing pickleball with friends.

It wasn’t that bad! As a small apology, here’s a tip about the annual Cultivate Cup Pickleball Tournament later this June, which raises money for school and community gardens in Charlottesville.

This week: No-BS travel recs that hit the Climate Trifecta ( 👍 planet, health, wallet).

Most of G’s family lives south of Nashville, and obviously we want to visit as much as possible. But driving there is a torturous 11 hours and flying is an exercise in hot, expensive misery.

So what we’ve done for the past decade of travel is alternate between what seems, in the moment, to be the lesser of two evils.

Let’s drive: There was the time that we stopped for gas in Bristol on a cold, gray November day and our car wouldn’t start up again.

After the longest 10 minutes of my life spent simultaneously googling “2006 subaru not starting ideas help” and envisioning what a night spent next to the Bristol Speedway would do for my nervous system, G took a leap of faith and followed one Redditor’s advice to unscrew and rescrew the gas cap, wait 10 seconds, and turn the key again. It worked? We didn’t dare stop the car again until we were at G’s parents’ house 5 hours later.

“Next time we’re flying.”

“You better believe it.”

So we flew: There was the time that we flew to Nashville for G’s sister’s graduation during what seemed to be a series of tornados across the entirety of Tennessee. The flight rerouted all the way down to Atlanta and everyone on the right side of the plane watched as we skirted a 30,000-foot black anvil.

Pretty sure the Baptist church got a few new God-fearing members on that flight, and maybe team climate-change-is-real did too.

“Next time we’re driving.”

“Damn straight, I’d love to keep living.”

So we drove: There was the time that we sat in traffic for 3 hours in middle Tennessee only to discover that a man with a shovel and a single orange cone, seemingly ready to do work but not doing any work yet, had been holding us all up.

“We gotta find a better way.”

So we flew: There was the time screaming babies outnumbered adults 3-1. The whole plane smelled like vomit.

“Makes Bristol seem like a cosy dream.”

So we drove: Ok one more.

There was the time when G was driving home after an extended holiday trip — on January 5, 2020 — when she found herself and our blue Subaru with the love is love bumper sticker surrounded by a contingent of very large, very rumbly pickup trucks covered in American flag decals. For the next 4 hours they all caravaned to Washington, DC — but for very different reasons.

None of these trips to Nashville hit any part of the good ole Climate Trifecta. But we love seeing our family, so we do it in a heartbeat. And vice versa: G’s family makes that trip with way, way less complaints.

This summer, though, we’re actually all meeting at the beach (so much closer!), which made me think that regardless of where you’re headed, you too are probably headed somewhere this summer. Most likely, the traveling part of the trip will be arduous in some way or another.

My gripe here is that few things seem to be more nebulous and out of touch with reality than sustainable travel recs. Clearly no one has figured out the best way to do it, let alone to Nashville specifically.

So this Hot Bones, I’m going to poke fun at some sustainable travel articles that were surely written by a) people who own private jets and don’t understand what it means to fly economy, b) Europeans who think trains will solve everything, or c) are straight up AI generated.

Then I’ll offer a few practical solutions.

Google has some pretty cool calculators for tracking emissions per flight, as well as a tool to see the equivalent amount of electricity used based on distance of your flight, cabin class, etc. (For example, your seat on a 3,500-mile flight from DC to London uses the same electricity as powering an average home for 30 days.) And yet! The screenshot above of Google’s sustainable travel recs is so funny to me.

Advice #1: Fly direct? Ummm, yes of course I’d rather not fly from DC to Atlanta via Houston. I’d rather not have a 5-hour layover in the open-air bathroom dungeon that is Charlotte Douglas International Airport. I’d also love to not deadlift my suitcase into an overhead bin in front of 50 people more than once a trip.

I think it’s fair to say that no sane person is going out of their way to fly with multiple stops. But I can see that if you’re, say, Logan Roy shelling out advice from his PJ, not making a pit stop in Sagaponack for oysters might seem like a logical tidbit of climate advice.

And as for choosing economy seating, don’t worry, we’re already there. No need to ask us to sardine for the planet.

For a lot of people in the US, flying is a huge chunk of our carbon footprint. But saying “hey maybe only sit in row 40D next to the bathroom?” or even, “hey maybe just don’t fly at all?” is unrealistic. We gotta get to Nashville, yall!

While airlines have their work cut out for them to develop the silver bullet of cost-effective, plentiful Sustainable Aviation Fuel (as of 2023, just 0.2% of total jet fuel was SAF), the best thing I think we passengers can do is tune out the wailing babies and enjoy some great, free sustainability-related content while we fly.

It’s not going to save the world, but it is a way to fill the time, help the planet by becoming a bit more knowledgeable, and save $15 by not having to pony up for in-flight wifi to stay entertained. Here are my recs:

Read:

Watch:

Listen:

AI content coming in hot. Driving instead of flying helps reduce your emissions and perhaps your anxiety (unless you’re driving through Bristol), but “hitchhiking a car” to travel more sustainably is going to be a hard pass for me. Journalism at its finest here ^ folks, thanks to Guest Writer at Greener Ideal.

So no to hitchhiking, even if the math maths about there being one car instead of two. A safer, less weird way to do this is to drive to your destination with friends or family rather than all meeting there, schedule permitting. Less tailpipe emissions that way, plus …

✅ More people means more opps to nap in the backseat

✅ More people means more new music to discover

✅ More people means higher likelihood someone brings good snacks

And if you have an EV, this is a fun opp to literally let everyone else take the wheel and see why going electric makes so much sense.

Traveling by high-speed train is the holy grail of travel happiness — efficient, spacious, cafe car mere steps away, plus according to Amtrak taking a train is 34% more energy efficient than flying domestically. Finding an Amtrak train, however, is more difficult.

This screenshot surely is from the European writer penning their article before stepping out for a smoke and a glass of red wine. “Why of course there would be a train to take you where you need to go. What? Only on the East Coast? Only between DC and Boston? Only at select times? And they don’t even tell you which platform to queue at in the recently and expensively remodeled Moynihan Train Hall? They just expect you to sprint to the escalator before everyone else? Quelle horreur.”

Yeah this one is idk. If you have access to a reliable train network, you’ve kind of won the game here. For most of us in the US, it’s a lot harder to pull off. Even in cities like DC the metro seems to constantly be catching on fire, so you know, stay alert out there.

I will say if you’re an HB reader in Charlottesville, the train to NYC is a pleasant 6 hours that drops you right in the city, not at LaGuardia. And if you just need to get to DC, the train is great for that too. But make sure to jump on the Northeast Regional (5pm) instead of the Crescent (6pm), because as one wise Redditor pointed out, “the Crescent is usually full of unhappy people who have been stuck on a train for a LONG time.”

🍠 Meal of the week: This is my yam vegan tacos at Brazos. Probably should order a frozen margarita since you’re already there.

🐶 Pet of the week: Bandana! He’s the life of the party who loves snacks and belly rubs (hound mix, 3 years old, 37 lbs).

😎 A fun activity, on a weeknight? Little Saturdays are back this summer at the Rivanna River Co. Tube, kayak, swim, hang out, and eat good food every Wednesday, 3-9pm.

💼 Cville job of the week: Senior Development Officer at the Southern Environmental Law Center (starting at $120k).

🍏 Cross-country job of the week: Environmental Initiatives Grant Manager at Apple ($111k - $209k holy moly that’s a range).