My wife and I were talking recently about our next vacation and possible time hacks it would take to get someplace.

In February and part of March we spent a month in Florida and rather than flying like we have done for many years, this time we drove. It was a total of 2,400 miles to Fort Myers, but it was certainly worth it. And now that we are both retired, we can take more time to be away.

But, admittedly, it was a long drive albeit exciting. Not wanting to stay in hotel rooms more than we had to, there were some long days on our way to southwest Florida. Three-hundred miles to Fargo, another 300 miles to Omaha and another 300 miles to Davenport. You get the picture.

And when you are past 60, sitting in a car that long causes your legs to get cramped. You don’t really feel it while you are traveling, but when you stop and get out of the car, for a moment you are on rubber leg street.

We kind of knew this already. Having to make annual trips to Mayo Clinic is no picnic either. It’s well over 600 miles to get to Rochester and we usually drive it in a day. And again, that makes for a long day.

One of the doctors asked one time where we stay on they way. We told him we usually just drive straight through. He got a little upset and said at our age we need to be stopping every two hours to get the blood circulating in our legs. Even if it’s walking around the car a couple of times, it’s better than nothing.

We tried to do that on our trip to Fort Myers, at least to some extent and there were no problems.

Long trips like that can create much more than leg cramps. Think about long flights. You can’t step out of the plane and walk around it a couple of times. Once you are in flight, you are there for the duration. And walking up and down the aisle isn’t the same thing.

I’ve been on some of those long flights and in one of them, it was a 14-hour flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. I was 34 years old at the time and yes, it was a killer.

There have been other long flights too. During some of my overseas National Guard missions, the flights were long.

One of them was 7 1/2 hours from Newark to Amsterdam. Another was six hours from Frankfurt to Doha. Coming home from the Middle East, my itinerary included a 9 1/2-hour flight from London to Miami. I thought that trip would never end. Then, it was another short flight up to Tampa and was the only time in my life I actually fell asleep on a flight.

I recently found out there is a direct flight from Dallas to Melbourne that takes 17 hours and 40 minutes, but that isn’t the longest flight that exists. Can you imagine? Newark to Singapore is a 19:10 duration flight. Being on a flight that lasts that long; I think I’d get stir crazy?

Here are some additional marathon flights: Auckland to Doha, 17:30, Perth to Paris, 17:10, New York to Auckland, 17:50, Houston to Sydney, 17:30, Dallas to Brisbane, 17:15, Capetown to Atlanta, 16:20 and San Francisco to Adelaide, 15:55. And I thought Los Angles to Sydney was long at 14 hours.

Jumbo jets are better now and can handle more fuel and passengers and can go such a distance. But it takes a cockpit crew to make it happen, not just a pilot and co-pilot. I remember a military flight from Panama to Bolivia. There was a secondary pilot actually sleeping in the cockpit who could take over when the current pilot got too tired to be alert.

All that said, there have been numerous missions to the Moon that take three to four days. But the astronauts are trained for those missions.

But with all the training in the world, we don’t know the human condition on a mission from Earth to Mars. It is said that a trip to Mars would take six to nine months, depending on the time of year.

Can you imagine being in a cramped space capsule for nine months? It’s kind of known what would happen physically, but what about the mental state of the human brain? I just can’t imagine.

A trip to Mars can be summed up in the title of the Little River Band song, “It’s a long way there.”