Monday, July 12, 2010
Going out of town sucks when you can’t bring your family with you. I remember when I was single how bitter I was that my job never called for any out-of-town travelling. Back then it seemed exotic and adventurous: airports and hotels and expense accounts. Fancy restaurants and bars with your coworkers after the workday. Extra vacation days taken to align with the travel so you can sightsee your travel destination. But no matter how much I wanted to, I could never land a project that required any travel. Now, of course, that it is thoroughly abhorrent to me, I travel three or four times a year. I know that that is still small potatoes compared to what a lot of folks I work with have to do, but the timing-irony of it all still gives me what I’d refer to as a “pouty face” if ever it were to show up on my kids.
I’m wrapping up day two of a seven-day stint. Yesterday I flew out; today was the first day of work. It’s hot and humid and foreign on the east coast. My hotel is fine, but nevertheless a hotel.
I called home when I got in and tried to talk to the kids, but they were so sugared up from a day with Aunt Claudia that it was a futile undertaking. She took them to a movie, doused them with adrenaline and confections, and promised to take them places and let them do things that I won’t agree to for at least the next three years. (For L; five years for N…) (Maybe...) (We’ll see.) After three or four minutes of listening to them bounce on their bed and shriek to one another I asked them to give the phone back to Mommy. The real pouty-face-inspiring thing about it all was that Stacy told me Aunt Claudia had given them a play phone today, and all day long they had been walking though the house carrying on long and quite serious conversations with me on it. The Daddy’s always greener…
I dropped a postcard off with the hotel front desk this morning. It had a picture of the Long Beach airport on it. I’d picked it up in the terminal yesterday while I was waiting for my flight. I haven’t had a chance to pick up any local postcards yet, so maybe for tomorrow I’ll jot off a quick letter on hotel stationary. Stacy mentioned that L was in tears yesterday because the “travel picture” she’d drawn for me to take with me on the plane had inadvertently gotten left in the car to be discovered on their drive home. I was kind of bummed when she told me; they really do cheer me up to have them with.
Now it’s off to tug down the overly tight bed sheets of my sanitary and impersonal and quite empty hotel bed, to be followed by a night of inane TV comedy into the wee hours when I’ll finally be able to semi-fall asleep on the overly abundant assortment of alien bed pillows. Travel.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
When I travel I generally try to pick up something for the kids, and for Stacy too if I can find something interesting. On my last trip I loaded Stacy down with a couple of pounds of interesting loose-leaf teas from a truly old-school tea shop – dark and alchemistic, like a set from a Harry Potter movie. Stacy loved them, and under normal circumstances we would easily and speedily drink our way through them, but we tackled our kitchen remodel immediately thereafter, so they are still sitting in their bags on some half-assembled shelf, unused and lonely, because we have no stovetop on which to boil water. But that’s another story.
I remember my Dad bringing home stuff on the rare occasions when he went on business trips. I don’t remember a single thing he brought back, but I do remember that he brought things. I know that’s kind of a kitschy Americana memory, but in our case when my Dad travelled, it was rarely actually in America. I’m sure, tucked away in corners of my parents’ attic, or in Goodwill stores or landfills, there are copious but forgotten testaments to my Dad’s thoughtfulness from Japan, England, South America and assorted parts unknown.
I had a few minutes before going in this morning, so I walked to a nearby kids’ bookstore I’d seen on a previous excursion. It was one of those independent bookstores that has to work extra hard to create a compelling identity apart from the Borders and Barnes & Noblei of the world. Now I’m not a death-to-Walmart kind of guy, but when it comes to the dying breed of independent bookstores, I do like to support the little guys. (He says with a straight face as he checks whether his Amazon order has shipped or his library hold has shown up at the local branch.) They politely let me bring my coffee inside -- I always ask as I come in, not so much to be a nice guy, but to see whether the shop owner is an uptight jerk; my passion for the little guy tends to evaporate in those cases. I browsed about bit. It looked like they had a preschool or daycare class that met there regularly, which I thought was cool. Off in the corner of the small store there was a marginally stressed looking 20-something lady and a dozen 4- or 5-year olds in various places on the mellowness-to-agitation spectrum, all sitting on a mat having snacktime. As I browsed a bookshelf nearby I began to hear mummers of “Someone’s Daddy is here!” I glanced over and happened to make eye-contact with one little girl. She smiled at me and then leaned over to a friend sitting nearby and whispered “That’s my Daddy over there,” gesturing in my direction.
Friday, July 16, 2010
One workday left, then the long travel day home on Saturday. Flights heading east always go by quicker than flights west. There are good physical reasons for it – the jet stream actually clips half an hour or more from flight times heading east and thwarts progress westbound. But the extra time spent traveling west can’t be fully accounted for by wind speed and good hard science.
There’s definitely a psychosomatic component to it. The relativistic bending of business travel time is the mirror opposite of the similar phenomena I’ve noticed surrounding vacation road trips as a kid. The drive to our coveted vacation destination, though covering the same geographical terrain and comparable road conditions, always took approximately 1.3 eternities longer than the lightning-quick return drive home after all the fun and happinesses have been expended. On business trips my flight “back east” is long but bearable; the reverse trip takes that half hour jet stream offset and parleys it into multiple hours of agonizing psycho-torture. I’ve heard scientists postulate about space/time wormholes that allow you to jump from one spot to another far distant spot at speeds quicker than the speed of light – short circuiting thousands and millions of years of travel time. Being a good conservationist, that leads me to conclude that all the time savings is “made up” somewhere, and I strongly suspect my return flights are subject to a significant about of this time-travel tax.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
To market, to market,
To buy a plum bun
Home again, home again,
Market is done.
My return flight proved to be everything and more than I expected. We closed the cabin door right at 11:50 to secure that statistical “on-time departure,” then sat on the tarmac for an additional 45 minutes until we were cleared for take-off. Then the captain came on the net and said we were being rerouted due to weather, so expect another 15-20 minutes worth of travel time. But luckily my iPod was charged, I was sleep deprived, and Loreena McKennitt was ready, willing and able to serenade me through the heavenly regions.
Whenever I can I fly in and out of Long Beach and avoid the evil behemoth LAX. It’s a sweet little retro airport that looks like something out of a Doris Day movie. We landed an hour late at beloved Daugherty Field and they hauled out the aluminum tarmac staircase and we all deplaned like a multitude of presidents on Air Force One. As I emerged into the dry warm California sunlight at the top of the stairs I was greeted by frantic waving from the observation deck off on the second floor of the airport terminal. Home again, home again. Jiggity jig.
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