Generally, I hate to travel on busy holiday weekends. The airports and roads are flooded with rookies--people who rarely travel and whose belief that traveling is a nightmare is reinforced because of the huge crowds and irritatingly long waits for everything on holiday weekends.
Despite my general aversion to holiday travel, my family and I will be on the road this Labor Day weekend because our niece is getting married in Wisconsin. According to AAA, (which bills itself as North America's largest motoring and leisure travel organization) I'll be joined by 28.64 million other Americans who plan to drive 50-plus miles over this three-day weekend. Fortunately, not all of them will be heading to Madison, Wis.
Given the state of the economy and the ridiculous price of gasoline, it's not suprising that the number of people planning to travel over Labor Day will be down from a year ago. What is suprising, however, is that it's projected to be down only 0.9 percent overall.
The organization projects a 4.5 percent drop in the number of people flying this weekend (thanks to a 15 percent hike in prices before you pay to check a bag) and a big jump--12.5 percent--in the number of people who plan to travel by some mode other than car or plane, such as a bus or a train.