For a few years now I fly less on family vacations, and I do not fly to destinations that can reasonably be reached by train from the NYC area – for example Washington, DC. Challenges are: visiting family in Europe and getting to field locations in Antarctica. What I like about flying less is that it is efficient: it saves time and money, commodities an academic always needs more of!
I am a mid-career geologist, paleoclimatologist, working on glacial sediments in Antarctica and elsewhere. I have been involved in expeditions, deep-sea and continental margin drilling projects as an on-ice or shipboard participant for 26 years. At Montclair State University, graduate students and I use a combination of field/ship and labwork (sedimentological and geochemical) to study paleoclimate archives from high-latitude sites.