I’ve been working as a more or less professional for nearly 20 years now, but Wednesday was the first time I did a one-day business trip by plane – to attend an meeting in Chicago.
The event itself was great, which was the main thing – an all-day workshop at which a colleague and I described how our colleges collaborate.
The travel was, really, fine: the meeting conveners paid for my plane ticket, the flights and El rides were on time, and it’s stupidly easy to get great coffee when you’re traveling by air. #good #better #best
Beyond that, though, the experience was interesting, in the Minnesota sense. This kind of travel is amazingly tiring, for one thing. After getting up at 3 a.m. to be ready for the airport shuttle at 4, I was at the airport at 4:45, one business-casual white guy in a horde of us. (Turns out, being up at that time gives me a splitting headache.) Flight, train, meeting, train, flight, shuttle, and I was back home by 9 p.m. – a solid 18-hour day.
For a second thing, the condensed nature of this trip revealed just how much of a noob I am at travel. On the way back home, my traveling companion pointed out that I had somehow, without any volition on my part, been granted TSA’s pre-check status. I’d never applied for it, to my knowledge, and certainly never paid the $85 for it. And yet there it was on my boarding pass, whisking me through security. I’d estimate that 80% of the other TSA Pre passengers were white guys of +/- 20 years of my age. Most of the rest were white women of similar ages (like my fellow traveler). The few non-white Pre passengers exuded wealth.
So I guess I have that going for me.
For a last thing, travel of this sort drains away a lot of the aspects of travel that I enjoy the most, like just looking around, or having foods that I usually don’t, or pausing to people watch. No time for that when you have to get to the plane/train/office! I’ll have to make up for this by going extra slow and eating extra much on my next trip.