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canyonwalkerI like to do a retrospective after big trips like the one to Australia last month. It's to understand what worked well, so I can reinforce doing it on subsequent travel, plus what didn't go so well so I can do it better next time. Usually I do them sooner than 2½ weeks after getting home... but 2½ weeks was how long it took me to clear my backlog on the trip. I finished it yesterday.
Here are Five Things:
1) I didn't need the boots. One thing I always think about in retrospective is packing efficiency. Did I bring what I needed; and did I avoid the weight, bulk, (potential) expense, and hassle of overpacking? On this trip the answer is Yes to both. There was one bulky thing I packed and didn't need. That was my hiking boots. Bringing them was the right idea, though. I didn't know in advance whether conditions would warrant hiking boots. It turned out my hiking sandals were perfectly fine. At least bringing the hiking boots didn't have any cost. They didn't make the difference between needing to pack an extra bag or not, the size of the bags didn't slow us down, and they didn't take up space in a bag I could have used to pack something anywhere near as useful.
2) I didn't do any* work during the trip. I left my work laptop home and never missed it. This is important to me because I believe in vacation being about really getting away from work. [*] I did actually spend a few seconds here and there scanning work emails from my phone. I did that to delete obvious spam & unimportant automated messages from my inbox. That saved me from feeling snowed under on Tuesday morning, Jan. 2, when I otherwise would have returned to a queue of hundreds of unread emails.
3) The power adapters we brought worked exactly as I wanted. Recall I opted to buy & bring country-specific adapters, 3 of them, on this trip rather than an all-in-one, every-major-electrical-standard-in-the-world adapter. They were sturdy, compact, and— best of all— could be in 3 places at once. I'll do the same for subsequent international trips. Yes, we'll end up with a bunch of different power adapters, but it's not hard to toss them in a storage box at home for the next time we'll use them.
4) Flying up front was a great experience but I wouldn't choose to pay for it. On our flight home we caught a great upgrade, totally free, to United's Polaris class service. Part of the reason airlines offer upgrades is to entice customers to pay for premium service on future flights by showing them how nice it is. Definitely, it is nice. But the cost premium is anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 more than economy, each way. It's nice but not that nice. Think about it as a hotel for the night. Normally you'd prefer to sleep in a bed in a hotel instead of sleeping in, say, your car. But if the hotel cost thousands of dollars per person per night— and for that it's not even the Four Seasons, it's the Holiday Inn— you'd be okay with sleeping in your car.
5) I'll say it again, coming home a day early to have a whole, easy day at home the last day of our vacation was superb. We enjoyed a bit of New Years Eve revelry with local friends on the 31st then had a perfect, be-a-slug-and-proud day on the 1st. Reserving a day for recovery is hard, though. It's hard because with limited time off from work there's such a temptation to book the trip "wall to wall", using each of my precious vacation days to be in-country. Balancing these opposing desires requires a conscious tradeoff every trip.
Here are Five Things:
1) I didn't need the boots. One thing I always think about in retrospective is packing efficiency. Did I bring what I needed; and did I avoid the weight, bulk, (potential) expense, and hassle of overpacking? On this trip the answer is Yes to both. There was one bulky thing I packed and didn't need. That was my hiking boots. Bringing them was the right idea, though. I didn't know in advance whether conditions would warrant hiking boots. It turned out my hiking sandals were perfectly fine. At least bringing the hiking boots didn't have any cost. They didn't make the difference between needing to pack an extra bag or not, the size of the bags didn't slow us down, and they didn't take up space in a bag I could have used to pack something anywhere near as useful.
2) I didn't do any* work during the trip. I left my work laptop home and never missed it. This is important to me because I believe in vacation being about really getting away from work. [*] I did actually spend a few seconds here and there scanning work emails from my phone. I did that to delete obvious spam & unimportant automated messages from my inbox. That saved me from feeling snowed under on Tuesday morning, Jan. 2, when I otherwise would have returned to a queue of hundreds of unread emails.
3) The power adapters we brought worked exactly as I wanted. Recall I opted to buy & bring country-specific adapters, 3 of them, on this trip rather than an all-in-one, every-major-electrical-standard-in-the-world adapter. They were sturdy, compact, and— best of all— could be in 3 places at once. I'll do the same for subsequent international trips. Yes, we'll end up with a bunch of different power adapters, but it's not hard to toss them in a storage box at home for the next time we'll use them.
4) Flying up front was a great experience but I wouldn't choose to pay for it. On our flight home we caught a great upgrade, totally free, to United's Polaris class service. Part of the reason airlines offer upgrades is to entice customers to pay for premium service on future flights by showing them how nice it is. Definitely, it is nice. But the cost premium is anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 more than economy, each way. It's nice but not that nice. Think about it as a hotel for the night. Normally you'd prefer to sleep in a bed in a hotel instead of sleeping in, say, your car. But if the hotel cost thousands of dollars per person per night— and for that it's not even the Four Seasons, it's the Holiday Inn— you'd be okay with sleeping in your car.
5) I'll say it again, coming home a day early to have a whole, easy day at home the last day of our vacation was superb. We enjoyed a bit of New Years Eve revelry with local friends on the 31st then had a perfect, be-a-slug-and-proud day on the 1st. Reserving a day for recovery is hard, though. It's hard because with limited time off from work there's such a temptation to book the trip "wall to wall", using each of my precious vacation days to be in-country. Balancing these opposing desires requires a conscious tradeoff every trip.
