I’m ba-aaack!
(It’s possible nobody noticed I was gone…but in case anybody DID–)
In the past year or so I have gone on many, many, many business trips. Oh, to think that there was a time when I thought that business travel was probably Glamorous and Exciting and You Get To See Lots of Cool Places on the Company Dime!!
Well, it ain’t, it ain’t and you don’t.
There are two kinds of business travel. There’s the kind where you are going to a conference or a seminar or a training course as a recipient of knowledge only, which is actually a blast. This is because all that is required of you is to show up someplace for roughly the normal equivalent of a typical work day, absorb whatever you are there to absorb during that time frame, then party like a beast into the wee hours. I had a trip like that to Montreal early last year. I actually didn’t anticipate it being as fun as it was–I knew I’d have plenty of time to explore the city ’cause it was a four-day seminar from 8 am to 4 pm each day, but I was the only person not just from my job site, but from my entire company attending, and a quick check of the folks I know from surrounding companies didn’t reveal anybody else from them that I might know enough to pal around with either. However, by the end of the first day I had fallen in with a group of folks in my general age range from various other companies and, heh. Montreal is a fun city…the first night we went out, we were out til 11 pm and I was kinda tired the next day and so was everyone else and we swore we wouldn’t do THAT again…so of course the next night we stayed out til 1 am and we REALLY swore, ya know, tomorrow night is the last night before the final day of the seminar so we will be good TOMORROW night..!
Yeah, we stayed out til 3 am. Oh well…
However, this kind of trip comprises the definite minority of my business trips. Mostly, I am there to work, and when that is the case, the days are usually at least twelve hours long and even after they are over, you have so much follow-up-and-preparatory work still to do that you have to go straight to your hotel room and spend another three hours on the faithful laptop. So in spite of the fact that I subsequently traveled to Chicago, Indianapolis (okay, we can probably skip over Indianapolis as a potential fun spot anyway–sorry to anyone who lives there, please don’t take offense!), New York, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Quebec City and Philadelphia, I did not really have too much in the way of F-U-N. Read, practically NONE, bleh! My company got its money’s worth outta me, let’s put it that way.
(Now, I do have another seminar later this year in Puerto Rico–finally, I’m travelling in the right direction as we head into wintertime instead of as close as possible to the freaking Arctic Circle like usual!! I am a presenter, not just an attendee–the organization sponsoring the seminar invited me and are going to pay for all my travel and other expenses based on a process I’m publishing in a peer-reviewed journal with my company that I developed to–er, do something. Sigh. Stupid confidentiality agreements…oh well, if you don’t work in biotech a description would probably range for you from boring to incomprehensible anyway. But the seminar is Wednesday and Thursday, deliberately designed they told me so that attendees could stay over the weekend…bliss! I am allowing myself to hope.)
This week’s business trip was of the usual variety, however. Flew out to LA Wednesday, trapped on the job site during all beautiful beach hours, just flew back in last night on the redeye and was a total effed-up mess this morning. Which really sucks because I took vacation today and Monday so I could go to the beach here and nope, I did not make it out the door this morning. Oh well, at least I didn’t have to drive from the airport straight into work either, and didn’t have to take a vacation day–travelled from midnight to 9:30 am this morning, which my boss is willing to concede counts as a full work day. So there. A small consolation, but it is my own. And our travel agency got confused and put me in an “Economy Plus” seat right behind the First Class section on the return flight instead of the usual crap seat in the dead back of the plane so EVEN THOUGH our plane had unspecified electrical problems that kept us at the departure gate for an hour and a half after we were supposed to take off, it coulda been way worse.
Anyway, in my bountiful spare time on this plane and many others, I have been compiling a running list of thoughts, advice and complaints that I feel like sharing. Also, it’s a painless way to solicit advice from any other frequent fliers out there that might wanna share some happy tips on making business travel life more like people THINK it is rather than the way it ACTUALLY usually turns out–hook me up! 
Long Plane Flights:
1. They suck.
2. Don’t wear socks; your ankles swell up like balloons sitting in a fixed position at high altitude for hours.
3. Do business class or even the new “economy plus” if you possibly can, unless you enjoy seeing how long you can sit with your knees jammed into your chin. Do not ever fly JetBlue. I am five feet eight inches tall and one hundred thirty-five pounds, which makes me a very average size for an American person, and I was physically unable to sit facing forward in their standard seat because my knees would not fit behind the seat in front of me and the seatbelt prongs dug into both sides of my butt.
4. When making transoceanic flights, do not leave the business class TV screen tuned to the picture of the plane going over the ocean. It may seem cool at first, but after you discover that intervals of three hours at a time don’t appear to change the plane’s position over the endless blank blue appreciably you start to lose it a little.
5. Make a big hairy deal to yourself out of trips to the bathroom with the toiletries kit they give you.
6. Accept in advance that there will be a screamy poopy nauseated baby within fifteen feet of you on any flight you are on that lasts more than three hours, especially any flight you plan on sleeping during.
7. There is no law that says you have to talk to large stinky older men sitting next to you, even if they keep trying.
8. Pay absolutely no attention to anything the pilot says, especially about “turbulence” or “mechanical problems.” Seriously, what can you do about it?
9. Accept that if you try to alleviate the paralyzing boredom of the flight by eating everything they offer you in business class, you will gain at least five pounds by the time you return home and you will suffer indigestion on the plane and also, it won’t taste very good.
10. Whatever you do, do not miss your scheduled flight, as any replacement flight will be twice as long, require at least twice as many plane transfers and will have layovers of either less than one hour (especially for international flights) or more than four hours (especially for domestic flights).
11. Believe that customs and baggage officials couldn’t care less about the quality of your life personally.
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