Today I have been to Stockholm over the day, it was a horrible experience! These trips usually take me about two and a half hours one way, but today it took me a full six hours to get to Stockholm.
The airport taxi picked me up in time and we were at Malmö airport about 40 minutes before my plane was supposed to depart, at 09:45AM local time. I had a caffe latte and a croissant at the cafeteria and was waiting at the gate 25 minutes before the announced departure time. Five minutes later it was announced that the airplane that was supposed to take us to Stockholm had landed at Copenhagen airport in Denmark instead, due to heavy fog at Malmö.
We were then told we would be shuttled by bus to Copenhagen airport to catch the plane from there. The trip to Copenhagen airport takes about 20 minutes over the Öresund bridge and we would be there in good time for the plane to depart an hour later than the scheduled departure from Malmö. I would maybe miss the lunch, but would still be in time for my meeting. So I decided to travel with the bus to Denmark, which was a huge mistake as it turned out.
Once we got to Copenhagen airport we were told that the departure was delayed for an hour without any reason given. I once again made a wrong decision, when I did not abort my trip with that knowledge. After hanging about for an hour we were allowed to board the plane, if it had left at that time I would have been a bit more than fashionably late but would still catch most of the meeting.
Instead, at the precise time of departure, we learned that three passengers who had checked in with luggage had not boarded the airplane. This meant that the three's luggage had to be unloaded before we could leave, this procedure took another 30-40 minutes.
The flight to Stockholm was smooth and took less than an hour. I was booked to take the Arlanda Express train which takes 20 minutes from the airport to Stockholms City centre, but when I got to the train station I was informed that all trains to Stockholm had been cancelled for more than an hour in order to conduct necessary recovery and cleaning up due to the fact that a sad soul had decide to commit
"suicide by train". The alternative way to get to Stockholm City from the airport was by coach, which takes 45 minutes to an hour.
All this hassle with just one cup of coffee, a croissant and only three cigarettes. (Smoking isn't allowed anywhere these days!
*Deep sigh*)
The trip home was smooth and uneventful, thank heavens for that.
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On the trip home I was thinking about how wonderful it would be if we could teleport in first life too. Just to say
"Beam me up, Scotty!" and hey presto there I would be at my meeting in Stockholm. What a marvelous and efficient way to travel long distances in just a matter of seconds. Isn't it weird that more efforts aren't made to achieve this? We can land men on the moon and split atoms, how difficult could it really be for those geniuses to come up with a relatively safe way of scattering our atoms, moving them with the speed of light and then reassemble them at the destination point?
I am sure there will be some minor flaws at first, but they could try sending bananas back and forth during the experimental stages and then start with people. Of course there would be some mix ups from time to time, but then there always are some risks with new technology. Some guy could turn up at the destination point with a huge bosom, while the woman who lost the breasts came out with a flat chest. Those are reasonable sacrifices we must make for the good of us all. Eventually I am certain that it would almost never occur, not more than once in 10.000 teleports or something, would anyone get someone elses foot or dick or whatever.
In time they could perhaps even combine these travels with rejuvenation, where they filtered viruses away before reassembling or just gave you a desired makeover that shaved away 2-5 years or so.
