Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Today's my first day of vacation. Yeah, I wrote over the weekend about starting vacation, but that was the weekend. Weekends don't count as vacation. Today, Monday, is my first real day of vacation. And today, on my first real day of vacation... I worked. 🤣

Oh, I didn't work a full day. Good grief, I'd never do that. Not unless I was getting a day comped somewhere else— which I have done before. Twice this year, even! Once in March and once again later in March. 😅 But this time it was just 1 hour of work. I figured I can give the company an hour on my day off in exchange for all the flexibility I enjoy during regular workweeks.

Me feeling charitable, or reciprocal with flexibility, isn't the only reason I took a meeting and did some followup work today. It's that, as I've pointed out many times before, work doesn't stop just because I'm on vacation. Especially in sales, work doesn't stop. Customer projects keep moving forward, and frequently the deadlines are set without regard to my availability.

When that presents a big problem I push back and/or call for backup. Indeed, there was another customer meeting today I let my boss handle for me. So he's working a bit today, too— which absolutely factors in to my charitableness / reciprocity calculus. A colleague was even willing to cover this meeting for me. But I volunteered to do it myself even on a day off because, honestly, the alternative is worse.

You see, the alternative if I let this going a week or longer without touching it is not "I'll do it later, when I return," but rather, "While I'm out for a week, other people will try to do it, and they'll do something wrong and break it, so when I return I'll have to spend 3x as long fixing what's broken. Oh, and when it broke someone pressed the panic button, so now I have to join multiple status calls with managers who are demanding explanations." 😣

Here are a few thoughts from our Thanksgiving trip on what worked well, what didn't work so well, and what we might do differently the next time around.

1. Red-eye flights barely work. I confidently booked a red-eye flight out to the East Coast to start the trip after a tolerably okay red-eye experience flying to Toronto in August. In doing this I realized an important difference: the Toronto flight was in first class, enabling me to sleep for most of the flight. This trip I flew in coach, and I was stuck awake most of the overnight flight, unable to fall asleep even though I was tired because I was so uncomfortable. As a result I needed a nap midday— and was able to get that sleep only by snoozing in my rental car in a parking lot! I will be cautious on future trips to book red-eyes only when I have a safe place to crash out for a few hours the day I arrive.

2. Traveling Light is Right. We travel with only carry-on suitcases whenever it's feasible, as it saves us time not checking/claiming luggage at the airport and zeroes out the risk of lost/delayed bags. Plus, it's easier checking into/out of hotels when we can carry all our bags in one trip without the aid of a luggage trolley. Part of what makes flying carry-on-only feasible on a trip like this is planning to wash laundry halfway through. On this trip that plan was easy; we did laundry at my inlaws' house. Other trips we do laundry at a hotel, which generally doesn't suck at mid-range hotels where they have coin-op machines that are usually in good condition and rarely busy. This trip we also packed lighter than usual figuring we might need extra space in our bags to bring new things home. It's a good thing we did that because Hawk bought a bunch of rocks. 🤣

3. Unclear if we'll do this again. 😦 We had several missed connections on this trip. No, not the airline kind of missed connections; missed connections with people. Half my sister's family was out of town, three of my nieces ghosted us/nope'd out of meeting, and one of my cousins canceled at the last minute. In addition, Thanksgiving dinner felt repetitive this year. It's the same people, doing the same thing, over the same food, as the past few years. And most of us are older and less dynamic than years ago. It's lost its spark of novelty. Don't get me wrong; I did enjoy the visits we managed to have. But it seems like trying to rush a bunch of stuff together into this holiday week produces as many disappointments as enjoyments. Maybe next year Hawk and I should vacation on our own over Thanksgiving and pick another time, perhaps one in the good-weather parts of the year (i.e, not snowing as we leave) to see people.

Thanksgiving triplog #4
Manassas, VA · Sat, 22 Nov 2025. 9:15pm.

It's been a busy day today. We arrived early this morning on a red-eye flight having gotten maybe one hour of sleep, ate breakfast in a convenience store parking lot, and met friends for lunch and took a nap in a thrift store parking lot. And that was all before 3pm. Since then we've driven 45 minutes to another city, met more friends, had another meal with them, and then driven another 45 minutes around the metro area to where we've checked into our hotel for the next 4 nights.

Our dinner hosts this evening were Joe and Adriane, another pair of Hawk's friends from college. It's great that she has close friends she's kept in touch with. I've lost touch with all of mine. We met them at their house in Silver Spring, Maryland, where we've visited a number of times before. In fact the last time we saw them was pretty much this same day last year. ...Not the same numerical date but precisely "the Saturday before Thanksgiving".

Last year we went out to dinner at a nearby pub with Joe and Adriane, where I imagined my father may literally have drank beer with his college chums in the 1960s. But this year there was no pub-going. For one, Hawk didn't like their food. For another, I was still feeling fazed from a nearly sleepless night and didn't want to risk the sleepiness caused by even one drink of alcohol. So we ordered in Italian food and pizza and I passed even on the beer and liquor they offered me in the house. Me playing it safe turned out to be important because it allowed to spend several hours with them, chatting amiably in their living room, and still drive another 45 minutes on to our hotel for the night.

Now we're at our hotel for the night— tonight and the next 3 nights, too— in Manassas, Virginia, in the suburbs well west of Washington, D.C. What's in Manassas? you might ask unless you're from the area or are a Civil War buff. Well, for us, there's really nothing in Manassas. Like where we stayed on our pre-Thanksgiving trip last year it's a hotel location we picked because it's centrally located between places we planned to visit in the next few days. Though with a bunch of my relatives ghosting our texts and/or saying, "Sorry, something came up" I'm not sure how many of those plans will materialize into actual visits.

Anyway, it's late now, Or, rather, it feels late. It's 9:15pm and I am crashing, hard. The weight of last night's red-eye is really hitting me now. The parking lot nap I took this afternoon recharged me just enough to make it through dinner. But now my battery indicator is blinking "2%". Time to get to bed.

Texas Trip log #7
Back home · Thu, 13 Nov 2025. 9pm.

I'm back home now after a two-day trip to Austin, Texas. My previous blog, written at Austin's airport, may look like it's from just 4 hours ago, but it's from 6 hours ago because of the time change. Yeah, it was a long day already when I left. Now it's longer. What's happened since then? Well....



Yup, my flight was delayed. We boarded 10 minutes late, then it slipped to 20-25 minutes late by the time we actually departed.

On the plus side, Hawk's personal schedule for the day was running late, too, so she offered to pick me up at the airport in San Jose and go out to dinner together. The flight landed at 7:30, and I was in our car headed to dinner by 7:42.

On the flight I wasn't sure I'd have enough energy for dinner. It was late, it was a long day, and I thought I might just want to go home to bed. But being able to stand up and walk, breathe non-recycled air, and seeing Hawk again help perk me up.

As we drove off from the airport we discussed where to go for dinner. Hawk suggested Giovanni's, a favorite local pizza place. I countered with "How about something bland?" since I felt I'd had too much rich food the past few days. Then as we talked through it I realized that "bland" would be something like Denny's (ugh; already had it this year) I decided a pizza would be bland enough for me. 🤣

Now we're back home. I've unpacked my suitcase and I'm winding down for the evening. Actually I'm not just winding down I'm shutting down. I don't have mental bandwidth for anything else tonight. And as I look at what is on my calendar for tomorrow I see it's going to be an absolutely packed day, starting with a meeting at 7am.  It's just as well my meeting in San Antonio went remote (instead of in-person) and I had deftly booked alternate plans to fly home tonight. Well, at least by going to bed now it shouldn't hurt so much when I have to get up at 6:15am and start another full day.

Texas Trip log #5
Residence Inn · Thu, 13 Nov 2025. 7am.

Last night could have been an early evening. It could have been, but it wasn't.

I went out with my sales colleague to treat a prospective customer to dinner. They picked the restaurant, an Italian joint in the Domain. "I just love uniquely styled restaurants such as this," someone in the group gushed. "It's owned by Cheesecake Factory," I pointed out. At least the food was better than Cheesecake Factory. And the menu was just 2 pages, not 27.

I thought that dinner, with copious drinking, was going to be why it was a late night. Instead, both the gents we were entertaining wanted to get back to their families. Yay, engaged dads! They big us goodnight by 8. My sales colleague suggested we get a few more drinks. Mindful of the fact I had my morning alarm set for 6:15 already I suggested we limit it to just one. I was back in my room by 9.

Alas it was just staying up too late that was my excuse for staying up too late. I got involved in watching videos on YouTube and couldn't settle down to sleep until after midnight.

Morning came early today. At 6:15 I was up before dawn— even with the recent switch off of Daylight Saving Time. I've spent 30 minutes catching up on yesterday's unread emails while nibbling on breakfast in my room. Now it's time to shower, pack, and head downstairs to meet my sales colleague to prep for today's in-person meetings.

It was a pleasant weekend... which I am only writing about just now, at 8pm on Monday evening, because today has been such a whirlwind of starting a new workweek that a blog I thought I might write at 8am I couldn't even start until now. 😰 But this young week's busy-ness is a topic for another day. Right now I just want to wind down a recount a quietly enjoyable weekend.

Hawk and I had no big plans this weekend. That's partly a consequence of her having limited mobility as she works to recover from foot surgery 3 weeks earlier. She tries to push her boundaries every day. Though every day those boundaries reassert themselves.by pushing back. After a few hours out she needs to nap for a few hours at home.

Saturday we went out for lunch together then visited a friend who was hosting a games day at his house. We gamed until about dinner time, playing a few different games each. some_other_dave was there— it's like he'd come from Hawaii just to play games every day— as was a newcomer to our group. "Ronald" was conspicuously younger than everyone else, an obvious and lone younger Millennial among a crowd of Gen Xers through young Boomers. It reminded me to ponder why our group is so sorted by age when we don't take any action or have any reason to filter people by age. (Other than "Are you mature enough to play a serious or semi-serious tabletop game?" Some parents bring their older teen children, for example.)

Sunday we went out together again. Again we started with lunch out. After that we went shopping. I made a quick run at Total Wine for a few more bottles of wines I'd really enjoyed recently. Then Hawk did a bit of clothes shopping at TJ Maxx for dresses or large skirts that fit with her surgical boot. Finally we shopped at Costco, which had been the impetus for the whole trip. And the specific impetus at Costco was a Lego set... a Lego set of 6 gems on a display stand! I bought it for Hawk as an early Hanukkah gift.

Just the walking around at Costco pushed Hawk's boundaries— according to her step counter it's easy to walk a mile in that store— but she still had energy to suggest we invite friends over to play cards on Sunday evening. We discussed going out for dinner together but then Hawk got the idea to volunteer me to cook dinner for everyone instead. 😅 I don't really mind; I moderately enjoy cooking and hosting, and we had the makings on hand, having just shopped at Costco.

Cards with friends was fun. Hawk's long day caught up with her, though, and she was fading badly after two matches of Spades. She retired upstairs as I wound things down with our friends Jeremy and Aliza. And by "wound down" I mean Jeremy and I split another round of beer before calling it a night.

This week, since returning to work on Wednesday morning after a relaxing long weekend in Phoenix, I've been developing a customer workshop. The deadline was short... It was decided early last week ago that I'd have to deliver it today. And not only that but I was on the road for 3 days last week with a business trip and then had 2 days of PTO planned this week. Thus the work in earnest on the creating the workshop began Wednesday morning. To run it for an audience of 6-8 devops engineers today at 9am. 😳

TBH I could have started before Wednesday. Although at the same time, not really. Mon-Tue were out because I was on vacation. Last week Thursday afternoon I'd just gotten back from a business trip and was tired out. And Friday I was both still tired out and had at least half a day of regular work to do. So I started this week Wednesday.

At first I was kicking myself for not starting until Wednesday. Despite the reasons above I kept scolding myself, "This would be so much easier if I'd done even 1 hour per day of it last Thu-Fri." That made me feel down. But at least I got going Wednesday. And I made steady progress at it, ultimately working until after 6pm because I was in the zone on it. That made me feel good.

Thursday was another "in the zone" day— at least up through lunch. After lunch I paused working on the workshop because I had a few important meetings to attend. When I got back to the workshop development work around 3pm I found that my infrastructure had gotten borked. 😰

My systems were wedged. About 95% of what I'd built was unusable. It wasn't anything I'd done; I hadn't touched it for 3 hours. And it seemed like it wasn't somebody else's fault, either; nobody else was using my infrastructure. Something had just failed on its own. And while I know enough about the infrastructure underpinnings to figure out, in broad strokes, what was wrong, I'm not expert enough in the details to have fixed it. Fortunately I still have one colleague— I used to have three, until the layoffs of a few weeks ago— who is familiar with the infra. Unfortunately it was already after 6pm for him and he was offline.

I messaged my boss to let him know. He was understanding of the predicament. He encouraged me to do as much as I could the rest of the day, and he'd help get my east-coast colleague involved at 9am EDT (6am my time) today. I finished the day Thursday pleased with how much I'd built in 2 days but crestfallen that a system snafu at the 11th hour might force us to push the seminar off to next week.

Well, I woke up at 5:40am today. It's not that frustration made me unable to sleep; just the heat. But the frustration was definitely there so I decided I might as well put on a shirt and log in to see if my colleagues were active. They'd just logged in a few minutes earlier. Logan, the guy who setup the infra originally, had just messaged that he was starting to take a look. Within 10 minutes he'd diagnosed the problem. It was basically what I'd figured out, but at a more granular level. He knew the specifics I didn't, so he knew which part had failed and how to reset it. He reset it, and within another 10 minutes everything was back up and running. The path was clear for me to deliver the workshop seminar today at 9am!

The seminar went well. We had a good number of attendees at the start, though half were called away less than 15 minutes later when part of their infrastructure went down. Oh, the irony! I even joked with them about my infra outage. But their infrastructure runs the e-commerce site for a small retail brand you might have heard of, so "down" for them means it's all-hands-on-deck for their infra team.

Their infra team was about half the attendees. The other half were apps people whose app was behaving just fine, so they could stay. I ran the workshop with them. It went really well. We ran until just after 12pm. The customer appreciated it, my sales counterpart said I did a fantastic job, and my boss really liked it, too. Good times!

L.A. Trade Show journal #5
Back at the hotel · Wed, 17 Sep 2025. 10:30pm

It's after 10pm now and I'm settled in back at the Moxy hotel. It was a long but good day at the AWS Summit trade show. Alas my day was not over when the show was over.

First I had to walk back to my hotel...



...which as I mentioned this morning, is right across the street from the LA Convention Center. Again, that's why I chose it despite knowing it has laughably tiny rooms. But that was also not the end of the day. I merely stopped by my room to drop my bag before heading back out. My company sponsored a reception this evening at a bar a few blocks away.

As I passed through the hotel I noted that one or two other companies were hosting receptions at this hotel. Why couldn't we have done that? (Rhetorical question; I know the answer is a combination of "Because we don't plan things far enough ahead" and "It was probably too expensive".) So I walked about 6 blocks over to our party location.

"You walked?" all of my colleagues at the bar asked in separate conversations after I arrived. They were incredulous that either I (a) knew the dire risks and did it anyway or (b) didn't know how direly risky it was and foolishly did it. Okay, it wasn't so much option (b) because they know I'm not foolish. But, c'mon. It was 6pm. Daylight. And just a handful of city blocks. Yeah, I passed half a dozen homeless people (or wandering drunks) along the way. But let's not get overly paranoid about big cities. They are not the violent crime cesspools they're routinely made out to be in parts of the media and social media.

The reception was good. I took advantage of the company's generosity to knock back 5 drinks along with a few tacos served buffet-style. Hey, it's not like I was driving home; just walking. Though one of my colleagues practically insisted on driving me home so I didn't have to walk the 0.4 miles solo.

Back here at the Moxy I decided to check out the action at the rooftop bar.



The reception party that was up here was winding down at 9pm when I arrived... and the outdoors bar was surprisingly closing early. The bartenders had just about everything packed away when I arrived. So after taking a few pictures I went downstairs to the restaurant on the first floor to seek out some food. Now I'm really kicking myself for not going up to the rooftop bar last night. But last night I was pretty tired and just couldn't be bothered leaving my room.

Speaking of tired and not leaving my room, that's where I am and what I'm doing now. I got some dinner at the lounge downstairs. It was busy but I ate quietly, by myself, then came back up here. Tomorrow's going to be a busy morning, and I'm pooped after a long day. I think I'm going to be lights-out by 11.

Keep reading: the next morning I navigate $25 bagels and flying pigs in Leaving Los Angeles!

Napa Trade Show blog #3
At the hotel - Tue, 9 Sep 2025, 6:45am.

There are two things I often say about working at trade shows. One, trade shows are a marathon, not a sprint. They're multiple days, generally multiple long days, so you've got to pace yourself. And two, you especially have got to avoid hitting it too hard on the first day. Or in cases like this, the first night. That's after the team arrives in town, everyone's spirits are high, and none of the tiredness of long days on the show floor has set in yet.

After I arrived on Monday afternoon things seemed set for a reasonable evening on Day 0 of the show. I mean, even my need to rush out to buy missing hardware for my tuxedo was resolved with a minimum of fuss... and $50.

I got back from my emergency shopping trip in time to catch the second half of the late-afternoon reception and hob-nob with my colleagues over a few glasses of wine. I would've hob-nobbed with customers and prospects but, frankly, there were barely any present today. In fact the reception was about 80% employees of the host company, identifiable by their green shirts with a cheeky slogan on the back.

After the reception my colleagues and I went into town for a fancy dinner. Regional VP Alan is back on the crew for this show (he'd tagged out over a health problem then tagged back in when he recovered much faster than expected) so you know we went out to a good steak-and-wine restaurant. That's Alan's way. And the steak house was just 2 doors down from the suit shop I'd been at 90 minutes earlier. "If anyone needs an emergency bow tie," I said loudly to the group, "There's a shop right next door!" 🤣

Over the course of dinner I was careful not to hit it too hard. For example, I stuck to drinking wine, no cocktails. And I alternated glasses of wine with glasses of water. I still enjoyed it all, of course. The point was when we went home I had a light buzz going instead of a drunken stagger. But something I ate or drank (or both) disagreed with me. I'll spare the unpleasant details and skip to the result: I was awake, in discomfort, until 2am.

Even worse than being unable to fall asleep until 2am, my morning alarm was at 6:15. 😖 I've got a sales forecast meeting with my boss at 7. Then after that, a full day at the show. Yeah, I'll catch a break of about 2 hours after lunch. But then it's showtime again through this evening's reception ending at 7pm.

I expect tonight is going to be an early night. We'll see if my stomach problems stay gone. I'm not 100% sure because right now I'm not sure I'm back to 100% yer.

I've been busy this month. That's not just a feeling; it's by the numbers. One of those numbers is 5— as in 5 trips this month.

I've got 5 this month because I wanted to. Back in July I fretted that I wasn't traveling or doing things as much as I'd like. One reason for that was lack of planning. It's kind of too late when Saturday 10am comes around and I'm thinking, "Gosh, I don't have much to do today." So I looked at my schedule for August and filled in the weekends with plans. I wound up with 5 trips planned in August. Subsequently one of those trips got pushed out, but we put another its place.

I've now completed 4 of those trips. Chicago last week was #3, and Phoenix on Sunday-Monday was #4. That leaves just one more for the month of August... and it's a long one. On Friday evening we're flying to Toronto, Canada. We'll be there through a week from Sunday.

Once September rolls around... things will not settle down. 🤣 That's because I've planned a lot of trips for September, too. I've got a pair of business trips, 2 nights each, the second and third weeks of the month. In addition to those I've planned two long-weekend leisure trips. That's a total of 4 trips in September... and I may well plan a 5th one in the next week or two!