We continue to think of travel as difficult, but it really is not, in the abstract, compared to 10 years ago, never mind 50 or 100. Multiple flights, multiple varieties of ground transport …

So, in Coventry, England. Going back to Abu Dhabi, UAE.

How to?

Up at 7 a.m. (GMT) to write my last piece for The National (my assessment that Mahdi Ali is a good choice as senior team coach)  … and out of the nasty little hotel (which I chose) at 9.

Cab to the Coventry train station. Something like 5 pounds ($7.50).

Buy a ticket on the 9:31 a.m. train to London Euston. It’s still “peak” so they charge a ridiculously high fee of 69 quid (about $135!) for a 70-minute, one-stop ride to the capital.

From Euston, cab it over to the Green Park station (because you can’t easily get to the Piccadilly Line, from Euston, and I’m dragging luggage). Cab ride in the city, which is curiously empty.

(Well, not really all that curious, when we recall that predictions of gridlock in Olympic cities pretty much never come true, because so many people 1) heed the predictions of disaster and flee the city or 2) don’t drive, and this goes back at least to L.A. 1984, which older folks may still recall as the easiest time to drive around the city in modern history.)

Anyway, the cab ride still costs more than 10 pounds, which is $15. I am reminded how difficult it is to drive around London because a) they drive on the wrong side of the road, which is hell to manage if you’re not used to it) and b) the center of the city was never meant to support multiple lanes of traffic.

Down to the Piccadilly Line, with the bag and backpack, and pick up the tube heading to Terminal 4 of Heathrow, which is no short ride. A train comes up three minutes after I get there, and for once in my life I am going to be well and truly early.

The Tube is not nearly as smooth as, say, the Paris Metro. The track is not as well-engineered — lots of jolting — and it just looks ancient. I know it is, but at some point over the past 50 years could London have replaced some of these 19th century stations? I suppose the key thing to remember is that the British government has been broke, basically, since World War I.

But it gets me where I want to go — way out west to Heathrow — for 5.30 pounds (about $8).

Then a three-hour wait ahead of the 2:45 p.m. nonstop to Abu Dhabi, on Etihad, the national carrier. The flight is shockingly, marvelously empty, and I am alone in a “two” with no one ahead of me, behind me or to my left. Oh, and it’s an exit row that I just jumped into because it was empty. This kind of thing often occurred 30 years ago, during the Golden Age of American flying, when capacity was miles ahead of passengers, but it never happens anymore.

All I can figure is … nobody who can avoid it is leaving London, where it was around 70 Fahrenheit (18 celsius) for Abu Dhabi in early August.

When I arrived in the UAE, the heat was just … shocking. Not surprising, but still a shock to the system, after 25 days in Europe.

At 1 a.m. it’s 36 celsius (98F). My Pakistani cabbie seems to find it amusing to regale me with recent temperatures in the capital, which include days of 47C (118F) … apparently not realizing right off that I’m coming back, not visiting for the first time.