I spent my past weekend visiting colleges, and have come to the conclusion that driving is the best form of travel. Commercial airlines are the worst.

First of all, if you can drive across country, you definitely should. Economically, driving is the cheapest way to travel. When you drive across country, you make your own schedule- you choose when and where to stop and fill up gas. In other words, you are in complete control.

When I drove from Canton, New York to Manchester, Vermont recently with my brother, we drove through some of the most beautiful countryside these states have to offer. We passed through the Saranac National Park when the leaves were changing color, and it was truthfully one of the most beautiful drives I have been on. The rolling mountains were a mixture of bright crimson and tan, something that I would have certainly missed had I flown.

Another great bonus when driving is not having to deal with the jungle that is an airport.

Airports are the worst. For starters there are the security lines, in which passengers are forced to empty their worldly possessions onto an x-ray machine where they are meticulously inspected: a total invasion of privacy. But I can give security lines a pass, because they do, after all, keep us safe.

As soon as you pick up your belongings though, you enter into a world without civility. People lose all sense of what is an acceptable way to conduct oneself in public. While waiting for their respective flights, they take their shoes off, revealing to the world how truly unhygienic they are. I have even seen a man go as far as clipping his toenails while waiting at his gate: I was scarred.

Meanwhile, everywhere you look, there are people huddling around outlets trying to charge up their iPhones because the idea of not being able to check social media scares them more than flying through the air in a metal cylinder with wings. Sometimes they will even bring their meals over from the food court and eat on the ground to retain that “outlet-side” real estate they have managed to acquire.

Should you make it through this jungle, bypassing its disgusting pitfalls along the way, there is still plenty to go wrong. For starters flights get delayed ALL THE TIME, meaning that you have to spend even more time in the giant petri tree dish that is the airport. Should you manage to get onto your flight, the checked bag that you just paid twenty-five dollars to get onto this flight with you may not make it.

While I understand that air travel is necessary for international travel, much more practical for longer trips, and saves you a lot of time, I would say still that it is not worth it. When considering that you have to deal with everything an airport has to offer you, commercial air travel is too exhausting.

While you do shave off a few hours by flying, you also subject yourself to a jungle in which the bestial form of man reigns supreme.

So, if you’re thinking about traveling in the near future, my advice would be to drive. Why subject yourself to all of the rigmarole of air travel when you can just avoid it just as easily?