It really doesn't matter how long it takes to fly from one place to another anymore. Once an airplane is in the air, it goes about as fast as I want it to go. 

What is of consequence today, however, is how long it will take to get the plane into the air in the first place. 

I've been in an airplane every day for two weeks, and not a single one has taken off on time. There are traffic delays, weather delays, mechanical delays and delays where there are no explanations at all. 

From the time I left my hotel, it took me eight hours to get from Chicago to Detroit. The flight itself took less than an hour. 

What we need in this country are corridor trains that go 150 mph, downtown to downtown. No traffic. Shorter cab rides. Less hassle. 

We won't ever have that, however, because it makes too much sense. No cable TV in Chicago 

Do you realize there is no such thing as cable TV in the city of Chicago? Something political, I presume, but where do these people get their wrestling shows without Ted Turner's Superstation? 

Until Friday, I'd never been to Minneapolis before. Now, I know why. 

I asked a bellman outside a Miami hotel to call me a cab, it was late in the evening. Just then, I noticed a cab parked across the street. 

"Never mind," I said to the bellman. "There's a cab across the street." 

"No, no," said the bellman. "That is a fake cab. You get inside, and the driver takes off somewhere and beats you up and takes your money." 

"Oh." 

At the Marquette Inn in Minneapolis the soap is blue and comes in the shape of a seashell. At the Marriott Marquis in New York the lobby is on the eighth floor. 

When you fly on certain American Airlines flights, you get to look at a screen and see what the pilots see when they take off and land. I covered my eyes on both occasions. Rudeness in Jacksonville 

Most big hotels have what is called "Spectravision." You can watch first-run movies on your TV for a meager $5.95. I saw "Running Scared" and "Back to School" in one day in New York. Later that evening, I went to sleep during "Sexy Stewardesses." 

Radio station WMAQ in Chicago, once one of the nation's most powerful country stations, is going all-talk. Explained a DJ there, the country music thing is all over. 

Tampa, Fla., is much too nice a town to deserve the Buccaneers. 

On a railroad bridge in Detroit somebody had spray-painted the word Lionel. 

At the Hilton in Jacksonville, Fla., the room clerks were rude. I got even, though. I took a shower and didn't put the curtain inside the tub. 

NEXT: New Orleans, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Birmingham, Charlotte, Greensboro, Denver, Colorado Springs and Nashville. 

That is, if I live that long.