Fact: men who travel are short, thin, bandy-legged, with yellowish skin and rotting gums (since they are always forgetting their toothbrushes) who, when they dare to open their mouths, mispronounce stupid things in other people's languages, like "May I to the outhouse go?" They have the wary, frightened, squirrel-like look of trespassers, which they are. Or else they just look sick. Also they have diarrhea and/or are constipated, and this fact, combined with all that vomiting, accounts for their sore backs (as if airport seats weren't enough). Having seen so much of the world, many of them are insane and apt to burst into fits of Foreign Idiom or worse yet, try to eat you. Picture a combination Donald Pleasanse and Hannibal Lecter with a garment bag.

People who travel a good deal, according to the myth, spend most of their days sipping mimosas in naturally occurring Jacuzzis. Their lives are like one big sailboat with a chartered crew of mermaids, bartenders, and potential tennis partners. (Air travellers: substitute angelic stewardi in hot pants for the mermaids.) As for trains, the only ones provided in the myth are like the Orient Express, with murders waiting to be committed and solved, or the train in North by Northwest, with Cary Grant or Eva Marie Saint waiting for you to join them in the dining car.

To be sure, movies and television are largely to blame for the travel myth. Note, if you will, that in movies no one ever suffers from jet lag. Imagine James Bond spending an afternoon in bed (alone) before tangling with Large in the Bahamas. Or John Wayne, having crossed the Rio Grande, taking five to massage his rump. In all those endless car chases, no one ever runs out of gas, or pulls over to fix a flat (or vomit). And isn't it odd how those same cars which when driven by us tend to break down, never do so when commandeered by maniacs in parking garages ?. Watching such films you would think that the best way to keep a car running smoothly is to smash it into a brick wall every now and again. Peeling rubber helps, too.

As for planes, in movies they always take off and land on time. Indeed, they never have to take off. In fact, much of the time the passengers don't even get on the plane. We see them in one scene, sipping mimosas, saying, "I think I'll go to Brazil." Next thing you know there's a lap dissolve and they're cruising at 50,000 feet, through a patch of weatherproof sky, the airline logo in plain view.

And who in the movies do we see going through customs, or even claiming their baggage? No one. That is unless they're hiding something really big. You're certainly not going to identify with them, are you?