We are on the ground. And it took only 30 hours.

OK, yes, that is nothing, compared to centuries past, when a continental passage was made by ship and took weeks or months.

But for us softies of the 21st century, 30 consecutive hours in transit is a big number.  Particularly when two long plane rides are involved.

First, from Long Beach to LAX, and the usual mob scene. (Really, folks, we must overhaul/rebuild LAX; it’s a civic and regional embarrassment; anyone who has traveled — at all — in the past decade knows how primitive Los Angeles’s airport is in comparison to many of those in countries we Americans still dismiss as Third World.)

Then five hours to JFK. (Far nicer than LAX, by the way.) A five-hour layover, long enough to eat a panini, decide not to pay the $8 for a wifi hookup and long enough to see the Dodgers fall behind 5-1 — en route to an 8-6 defeat to the Phillies.

Then a full hour on the tarmac of JFK as planes queued up … followed by 13 hours in the air to Abu Dhabi.

Thirteen hours is a long stretch, but it’s particularly taxing when 1) you’ve just done five hours on another plane; 2) the plane you are on is packed (just like the one before it); and you’re losing an entire night somewhere here.

Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, which didn’t exist as a country, 40 years ago. But Abu Dhabi, too, now has an airport that shames Los Angeles.

Getting through passport control and customs was simple, even including the stop we had to make to pick up our visas — enabling us to stay beyond the 30 days allowed to tourists.

A couple of curious aspects to the trip …

1. The flight from NYC to Abu Dhabi was like a United Nations of the Sky. The cabin crew alleged to speak about a dozen languages, including English, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, French, Spanish, Tagalog, Malay … And I heard languages I could not hope to identify.

2. The in-flight entertainment featured movies from a half-dozen countries. If I had been in the mood to catch up on the latest from Bollywood, I could have. Also available: Movies from the Philippines and Indonesia. I settled on “From Russia With Love,” followed by the derivative/satiric “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” … and capped by “Armageddon”, which I increasingly am coming to believe is The Greatest Movie Ever Made. Really. Go watch it again. Got to love the premise: A dozen American roughnecks, given a week of cursory training, can land on a moving asteroid, plant a nuclear weapon in the middle of it and save the human race. Great cast, spectacular effects, surprisingly effective and moving dialogue.

3. So as not to offend the sensibilities of some of the non-American travelers, a certain character in the Austin Powers movie is renamed “Alotta Cleavage.” True story. I heard it three times.

4. We were convinced that everyone on our plane was headed to Abu Dhabi. Isn’t that where the whole world goes to work? Instead, our Etihad flight turned out to be the first leg of hundreds of other guys’ (and they were nearly all guys) travels. Of the nearly 300 people on the Airbus 340, no more than a couple of dozen actually stayed in Abu Dhabi. The rest went on to flights to Lahore, New Delhi, Dhaka, Mumbai …

So, yes, fairly grueling day. But nothing like those many of our ancestors put in.

Oh, and this “emigrating to work” thing?

I once believed that lots of Americans, maybe most of them, descended from immigrants who came for religious and political freedom.

Now? Not so sure.

I imagine the idea of being able to vote may have seemed attractive to a fair number of people, and the idea of being able to practice your religion without being persecuted was important, too.

But it has dawned on my that most of our ancestors (those who didn’t come over as slaves, that is) went to North America … because they thought they could make a better living there. If they didn’t need the money, or didn’t believe they could improve their economic condition markedly … a lot of them would have Just Stayed Home.