Travel

Earlier this week my brother Matthew asked me if all the travel I do is getting old. I thought about it a while and threw out this:

There are two things I hate about travel:

1. Airplanes. They are all really uncomfortable
2. Being away from home

I wanted to add a little more to that

I have traveled a lot in the course of my 51 years. Most, of course after I left for college. Back then, the thought of travel was romantic. I wanted to see the world and experience places and things that I could not get at home.

When I was 18, I flew down to Peru to work in an iron mine. To pay for college, I worked in a coal mine in Coffeen, Illinois, and another one in Kemmerer, Wyoming. After graduating, I moved to Houston for one year, then Denver for one year, then back to Houston.

Back in Houston I had a job that needed some nominal travel. Mostly to Dallas, New Orleans, Tulsa and OKC. Day trips, occasionally longer trips. Travel was still unusual and interesting.

I finally moved overseas. This was something that I had wanted to since college. And Caracas was a great choice. I had a great two years there, and traveled all over South America and Mexico. My Spanish got to be pretty good – I had some in High School (notoriously my worst subject) and being forced to use it every day was valuable. I traveled about ½ time, maybe a little less. That was starting to get tiring. Latin American airlines were (are?) poorly run and probably dangerous. I never flew business class (and I am 6’6” and at that time probably 230#) so it was wearying.

Then I moved to Singapore for two years, and traveled non-stop. I was there for 22 months and flew back to Houston 18 times. At that time it was always a two stop trip (it is now a one stop trip) and at least 26 clock hours. Think about that – 36 days traveling. Additionally I had to fly around the region – so I was out of Singapore three weeks out of four. That was a lot of travel. The only biz travel I did was back to the US. So the flights to Beijing or Perth or Melbourne were all quite painful.

(It is with a touch of irony that I am writing this on Continental Flight 59, a Boeing 767 flying from Amsterdam to Houston in Business Class)

When I left Singapore, I stopped traveling, happily, for a short while. But since then I have indeed been traveling more. In particular since I took the board seat for a company based in Oslo, Norway.

Now, in terms of travel, they really treat me well. It is business class travel and the hotels are nice.

And the places I go for work can be interesting. But to me, it still comes back to those two things I told my brother:

There are two things I hate about travel:

1. Airplanes.
2. Being away from home

I just like to stay at home.