Up in the Air, Week 1

Please excuse the lack of posting that’s been going on the last few days. I had grand plans of trying to blog while I was on the road for work but it just didn’t happen.  I am going to have to figure out how to fix that since this week was the first of seven consecutive weeks of travel for me.

You read that right….SEVEN. WEEKS. OF TRAVEL. IN A ROW.

Over the next seven weeks I will be in 9 states (plus the two I’ve already been in this week)….that means at least one (if not two or three or four) plane rides per week until April 20th. All but one state/trip is for work, making me feel a little bit like George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air. Three days in and I am already exhausted. However, I’ve already learned three valuable lessons when it comes to this level of work travel:

1.Take advantage of the “what’s yours is mine” aspect of marriage. We have a lot of computers in our family, including two desktops, 1 broken laptop (yet to be disposed of), 1 working laptop, and a netbook. Ridiculous, I know.  Usually when I travel for work I take my large-desktop-replacing laptop with me.  However when contemplating carrying it with me (along with a carry-on suitcase and various work papers, etc) around various airports for three or more days at a time, I decided that just wasn’t going to work. The solution? Jason’s netbook. It’s small, lightweight and generally easier to deal with when all I really need to do is access my remote desktop. And fortunately now that we are married, it’s pretty much mine too!

2. A rose by any other name may not be as sweet. When Jason and I got married, I made the decision to change my last name.  The process itself was relatively painless and I took care of most of the major stuff (e.g., SSN, driver’s license, credit cards, utilities, etc.) pretty quickly last fall. However I neglected to change my frequent flier memberships. And apparently airlines are sticklers for things like the frequent flier name matching the name on the ticket. You can bet that I will be changing those this weekend! (Because as Jason said, “we’d better be getting something out of all of this.”)

3.Find the fun. Most of the time traveling for work sucks.  People are always like “oh you are going to Chicago, that is so fun!” What they don’t realize is that my trips are usually so quick that all I really see is the airport, the hotel, and (in some trips) state offices if I am lucky. But I learned that the only way to stay sane with all the upcoming travel is to find something fun to do or see or experience….especially in new places. This week, for example, I was in Vermont for all of 23 hours.  While 95% of my time was spent in the hotel, airport, and meeting I did manage to 1) eat some really awesome Chinese food (seriously….maybe some of the best I’ve ever had.  If you are ever in Burlington, check out A Single Pebble) and 2) go to the Ben and Jerry’s headquarters! We didn't have time to take a tour but we did swing by the gift shop and, of course, the scoop shop. I had tried out local favorite Hannah Teeter's Maple Blondie. Fortunately I had my camera phone to snap a few shots:

Bonus lesson: traveling for work this much is also a lot easier when you have a partner who is willing to help pick up the slack back at home. It was so nice coming home to a nice and (fairly) clean apartment to a husband who was nice enough to have done the dishes and some laundry while I was away

One week down…six more to go!