The Glamour of Business Travel

My friend WCW once opined that she felt business travel added to the glamour of a job, and so I'm posting this for her.

I was sent to New Hampshire to do a customer presentation and had myself booked to fly out on the Wednesday, spend the day at the customer site on Thursday and to come home Friday.

Here's the summary...

Tuesday evening: Pack.

Wednesday morning:
- 0-dark-thirty, get up and have a shower.
- 6:30am the cab arrives
- 7:00am I'm at the airport. The check-in is painless and I've of course packed so I only have carry on luggage. I've also travelled enough now that I always get United's "Seating 1", which means I am in the first batch allowed to get on the plane to fight it out for overhead luggage space. I used to resent those people who brought a bag/briefcase and a small suitcase, but I'm one of them now, especially after the time my luggage unsurprisingly didn't make the five minute connection I once had in Salt Lake City en route to Dothan, AL.
- Then comes the customs lineup. It's essentially random who you get, and I was in the lineup for the CustomsAgentFromHell(tm). The lady in front of me was getting a grilling and was even having her fingerprints taken and photo taken. By good fortune, the customs agent in the next line over was free and waved me over and wished me bon voyage and I was on my way.
- My flight left Vancouver more or less on time and we arrived in Chicago, where my connection was supposed to be at 4:10pm. Now, when I arrived, the departure board said "on time!".  Since this meant I had a short connection, the colleage I had run into on the flight out and I went to a fast food place for what was lunch for us. It was one of those moments where had we known, we'd have braved the lineup to get into Chili's. As it transpired, my flight was moved from gate F14 to F12, but still on time. Then back to F14 (no announcement this time), at 5:30. Then back to F12. Then back to F14. Then around the time it would be close to boarding, the announcement comes "It's been moved to gate E3!". Grrrr...
- We didn't even get off the ground until 6:10. This meant that, unlike the plan I'd had in my head, I arrived after dark, too late to get dinner anywhere, but there was a grocery store open not far from my hotel. Since this particular hotel had a kitchen in each room, I picked up something to make myself as well as cereal etc for breakfast. It's after midnight by the time I get to bed. Fortunately my suit survived the trip unscathed and I didn't need to iron it.

Thursday: o-dark-thirty... I awaken to NPR on the radio alarm clock. I like NPR.
- 7:00am, which is 4am as far as my body's concerned, my sales guy comes to pick me up for the hour plus drive to the hospital we're visiting.
- 8:30am, we arrive and they set us up in the board room where we'll be presenting.
- 9:00am, about four people are late for the presentation and we get the go-ahead at 9:15. I give a decent presentation (could have been a little more polished, but it went ok) and we have extensive Q&A with the customer.
10:30am, the competition arrives and the customer demonstrates just how bush league they are by letting them in and let them start to set up while we pack up.

My sales guy takes me to lunch at this great diner we picked at random, and we talk about the meeting and debrief, dissect, and talk shop. After lunch, he thanks me for coming out and drops me off at my hotel. I check with the travel agent to see if I can come home early since I'm done.

As luck has it, I get the final seat on the late flight to Vancouver. This leaves me about an hour to get to the airport and return my rental car. I go check out the absolutely enormous Barnes & Noble across from the hotel. I make a nice lunch box out of the leftover groceries I have for the flght home. I pack. I check out early and the hotel's nice enough not to charge me extra time even though checkout was at noon.

I get to the airport in plenty of time for my flight and security is painless, although once you know the drill (unpack your laptop, take off your shoes and your belt, empty your pockets...) it gets easier.

The flight to Chicago was smooth, and the 7:50pm flight to Vancouver was delayed until about 8:30pm but we still arrived in Vancouver close to scheduled arrival.

After a painless trip through customs, I took a cab home and was in my own bed by midnight.

Total trip time, starting from the time I left home to the time I got back: 42 hours.
Time spent in transit to airports, waiting in airports, and flying: 24 hours.
Amount of sleep I "officially" got, including time zone insomnia: 5 hours
Time spent in transit to and from the customer: 3 hours.
Time spent with the customer: under 2 hours.

Glamour indeed.

The World Cup

There was a time, perhaps as little as a decade ago, that I was "into" sports - I used to follow the Montreal Canadiens exploits (or lack thereof), I'd watch the NHL playoffs, I'd watch the World Series, I'd regularly watch the NFL (go Broncos!) and sometimes I'd even watch a little NBA action.

I'm not "into" sports anymore. I do watch the occasional NHL playoff game, but I didn't watch a single game of the Stanley Cup final this year - the NHL season is too long. The Cup was won yesterday and tomorrow's the first day of summer.

However, if there's one sports vice I do have, it's the World Cup. In 1994 I marvelled at "the beautiful game" and through an improbable set of circumstances, watched every single match at work. In 1998 I was working for HP, IT infrastructure provider, and through the new implementations of technology had the scores updated "live" on my desktop at work, and revelled with France as they won it all over Brazil 3-0. In 2002 I set my alarm for an improbably early hour of the morning, perhaps 2am, to watch Brazil agonizingly win it over my beloved Germany 2-0, their first goal coming mere minutes after the German captain almost scored on what would have been a highlight reel free kick.

I find the World Cup compelling sports for a number of reasons...

• There are games every day. The tournament starts with 32 teams, so every day there's someone playing a game - you're not left to wait for the "travel day".
• Unlike the Olympics, where there are many events that each have a small following, the World Cup has one thing - soccer. Several billion fans can't be wrong.
  
• The crowd is as much fun to watch as the game. During the Korea-France match, the Korean fans had tribal drums going and chanting Beethoven's Ode to Joy (in Korean no less). Then they went absolutely bananas when their team scored.
• The game doesn't stop. The clock starts, the half is 45 minutes long; the referee will add usually 2-3 minutes at the end to make up for "stoppage time", but there's no break in the game.
• There are only three substitutions for the entire game. The 11 people who start are it, save for subs.
• There are no substitutions for players sent off. In the Italy-USA game, for most of the second half Italy was down to 10 players and the USA was down to 9.
• A strict penalty system - one yellow card's a warning, get a second in the same game and you're not only sent off, but you miss the next game. Yellow cards carry over too, so if you got one in your first game, and another in your second, you miss the third. Boom. Done. No endless appeals.
  
• The "I can't believe he just did that with the ball" factor - it's amazing how much skill these players have.

There's more than that, but in terms of sports, it's my only "must watch must see" event. I think my wife's grateful it's only every four years.

Happy Father's Day Indeed

I had a wonderful Father's Day. I got up really early and went for a 30km bicycle ride, the first of the season for me, but will hardly be the last as I need to get in shape for the 60km Rona MS Vancouver Scenic City Bike Tour on August 13th.

Beyond that, I actually got to watch part of a World Cup soccer game, my car was washed and now looks less like a dad-mobile and more like a car with a child seat in it, and we had a great dinner with some good friends of ours.

A good day all around.