Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I'm pretty tired today after an amazing trip to Pinnacles National Park yesterday. The hike was about 4.5 miles with 1300' of elevation gain. I've done the hike many times before but I'm out of shape right now so it's hitting me harder than usual.

Writing about this hike is going to have to go on my backlog, as today (Monday) it's back to work, and I have over 200 pics and video clips to sort through from the hike. For now here's one quick photo:



Basically we hiked from the bottom here, Juniper Canyon, to the top and around the High Peaks Loop, then back down.

Up at the top we saw a lot of California Condors. That was amazing because the huge birds were nearly extinct not too many years ago. Like, down to the last few left on earth. Yesterday we saw several on wing in the sky. And no, it wasn't just one bird several times. At one point we saw 5 simultaneously. At the end of the day we saw what might have been ten simultaneously... but it was hard to tell if they were all condors or if some more common birds, Turkey Vultures, were mixed in to the circling formation.

Well, as this trip now goes into my blog backlog, it's a good thing I cleared our Georgia trip from my backlog. In fact I posted my last backlogged blog about Georgia yesterday morning just before leaving for the Pinnacles! ...Though it's not really the "last" because I do still have a few more things I'd like to write about that trip, including a retrospective. Well, I can see how I'll be busy with blogs for the next week... until whatever adventure I go on next weekend!

Where did the month of March go? That's a question I've asked myself several times the past few days as I've gotten accustomed to writing April as part of the date. "Where did [Month] go?" is a question I've asked myself many times over the past several years. Sometimes months go by in a blur. March seems like one of them.

Time passing in a blur can be good or bad. When a month seems like a blur because I've been so busy doing enjoyable things, the blur is good. It's a sign that I've drunk deeply from the well of opportunities. For example, when April-May 2023 went by in a blur.

On the other hand, when I'm looking back wondering where all the time went because I didn't do much enjoyable, the blur is disappointing. It's disappointing because I let the opportunities slip away like water through my fingers. For example, my lament Where Did Summer Go? in September 2023.

Arguing for March being a bad blur rather than an enjoyable one is that the month felt like a lot of day-to-day trudgery. Every week at work was a busy week. Trudging through the days can make it feel like time drags slowly. And some things I did in March certainly feel like they were already two months ago— like that weekend trade show in Pasadena I worked for my company.

On the whole March's blur feels like... well, not exactly a good blur; but let's call it a balanced blur. There was the daily trudge but I also squeezed in some good times. That trade show was exhilarating even though it was also tiring. Chatting with customers and prospects, and spending time with colleagues in long, unscripted periods are two of the things I like about sales. And I managed to take off two days in March: one where I relaxed productively at home, and one where I got a head start on hiking in the Sierras.

NYC Quickie Travelog #7
Back home - Tue, 25 Mar 2025, 9:30pm

I'm back home from my quickie business trip to New York City. I say "quickie" because I traveled out there for a day and a half of work. The whole trip, at 3 days and 2 nights, wasn't exactly quick. It's not like overnights or even out-and-back-same-day trips to Southern California or Phoenix. But it's fast for coast-to-coast travel.

Speaking of fast travel, I had a nonstop flight home EWR-SFO today. Why take a nonstop today after I took a connecting flight Sunday and carefully explained the tradeoffs that favored the connecting flight? It's because the tradeoffs are so particular to the circumstances that they have to be evaluated every trip, including each direction of a round trip.

The difference between outbound and homebound this week came down to seat selection. Flights on Sunday had only middle seats left when I was booking last Monday. Thus I picked Southwest with its open-seating policy, though that also meant no nonstop to NYC. For my flight today the seat maps were wide open when I booked last week, so I gladly booked a nonstop with United. Sunday's flights went out 100% full; my homebound flight today had at least 1/3 the seats in coach unoccupied.

I watched a few movies on today's flight: Joker (2019) starring Joaquin Phoenix and Kraven the Hunter. Joker was... sick and sad. I'm not sure where the filmmakers were trying to go with this gritty tragedy about a mentally ill person. Is/Was this supposed to set up another Batman reboot? I'll write more about it separately.

We landed in SFO about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. That was nice because it meant I could have dinner at a resaonable-ish time. I hailed a ride from SFO directly to a restaurant where I met Hawk at about 7:30. By the time I walked into the restaurant, though, I realized two things. One, my legs were really stiff from hours of sitting. Two, I was completely frazzled. Like, I could barely focus mentally or visually. Thankfully dinner with my spouse is a low threat environment. 😅

Now I'm back home-home and I... am still frazzled. I've only had the energy to half unpack my suitcase. And it's a small suitcase! Usually "unpack my suitcase" is one of the Zen things I do to end a trip. There's not enough energy for that tonight, though. I don't have energy for a shower, either— another one of the Zen things I do to mark that travel is complete. At this point I'm just going to hit bed early— as if 12:30am effective time is early— and deal with the rest tomorrow morning.

NYC Quickie Travelog #3
Midtown Manhattan - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 10pm

In my previous blog I wrote about the long road to New York today. Well, I was less than half way there I wrote that. I still had a connecting flight from Denver then dealing with getting across town.

My connecting flight from Denver was 30 minutes late. We were all set up to leave on time but then one of the crew was MIA. We lost 15 minutes waiting for a replacement to be sent over, then another 15 minutes because the plane was full and there were several "spinners" in the aisle. Well, at least it was my connecting flight, not the originating.

We landed at La Guardia airport. Choosing LGA was a matter of tradeoffs, as I noted in my previous blog. Immediately upon planning a trip to NYC I considered the tradeoffs of which airport to fly through:

• EWR has plenty of nonstops ex-SFO on my preferred airline, United, but is the least convenient for getting to upper Midtown. Also, UA flights had only middle seats left 6 days out.


• JFK has nonstops on other airlines, but I'd have to sit in a crappy seat. Transit options are middling.


• LGA is the closest airport but it'd require a connection. OTOH, my preferred carrier Southwest flies there, and I knew I could get a good seat with them. And it's the most convenient transit-wise.

So I chose LGA. And how convenient is it, transit-wise? From LGA one can ride the Q70 bus, for free, to the Jackson Heights station, and from there ride one of many subway lines heading to different places in Manhattan, including the 7 train which stops at Grand Central, 4 blocks from my hotel.

So, I took the Q70 to the 7 train and walked the last 4 blocks, right? Haha, no. It's freaking cold in NYC this evening. I did not pack an appropriate jacket for this. I didn't want to stand outside in the feels-like-34 weather waiting for buses and trains and hoofing it. So I called a ride with Lyft. For nearly $60 it's an expensive tradeoff. My company can afford it for having me travel late on Sunday.

But first I had dinner. In the airport. Yes, I chose to eat in the airport! It was another tradeoff. LGA is actually not the badly outdated shithole it was when I was traveling to NYC frequently in the late 00s. Now it's renovated and modern and beautiful. I saw an appetizing restaurant there so I figured I might as well eat while it's convenient— and still well before 9pm. See, that's the other half of the tradeoff. If I'd gone to my hotel first I'd have been eating after 9pm and I'd have been scrounging to find a place nearby that's open late on Sunday night.

NYC Quickie Travelog #1
OAK airport - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 8:30am

This morning I'm off to New York City. For work. Yes, on a Sunday morning. And not even comfortably late morning. To catch my 9:20am departure out of Oakland Airport— not the closest to home— I set my alarm for 6:30am.

Why NYC? And why sacrifice half of my weekend for work— especially when I haven't yet caught up on taking comp time for when I sacrificed my weekend two weeks ago? Would you believe I volunteered for it. In fact I didn't just volunteer, I basically demanded it. 😣

My company's doing a sales training program Monday and Tuesday in NYC. It's not for everyone; it's for a small, hand-picked tiger team. I heard about it last Monday from a colleague, Mike, who was chosen for the team and asked if I'd be there. "I haven't heard anything about it,' I answered, "Holy shit, you're not on the list," Mike said, checking the calendar. "I can't believe they didn't invite you."

Mike and I discussed it a bit and decided it would really make sense for me to go. I ran by him a 3- or 4 sentence request I'd send to my department head. He agreed with my wording and added he'd tell his sales VP that not including me was "nuts". The VP would be sure to add... persuasion. I sent the message off to my department head right away, while Mike delayed in pinging his VP to give my director time to do the right thing.

Long story short, an invite came through to me by the end of the day. My director was kind of a dick about it, though. 🙄 Maybe the sales VP was too... persuasive... with him. 😅

Once I was invited to the meeting, though, I started to have second thoughts about it. I made my case for going because I hate being left out. This training is for our new product, and people who participate in it this week will be the tip of the spear. We'll be the first to scale up selling it— and in the process we'll learn what works and what doesn't work, and communicate that back to improve the training, and possibly even the product, before they scale out to the rest of the sales organization. Blazing the trail and then paving a path for others to follow in sales is what I do.

But once I got the invite I felt a bit like the dog who always chases cars and finally catches one. Did I really want this? Did I really want to burn half my weekend just to be first? I could lay back like the other 80% of the team and take things as they come— and enjoy my damn weekend. The weather's going to be beautiful back home today, 72° and sunny. I would've gone hiking. Instead I got up early, trudged to the airport, and will spend most of the day playing Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to get to New York where the high temp is in the low 50s and it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

It's been an eleven day workweek. After a regular week of work last week I worked through the weekend at a trade show then rolled straight into another week of work this week. And ugh, there were a few early mornings involved. But now I've got a three day weekend. I'm taking Friday off as comp time. I'll take another Friday off later this month.

What's on tap for thsi weekend? Surely there's an exciting trip, but travel is what I do anytime I get a long weekend, right? Alas, no. The weather sucks almost everywhere I could travel this weekend, and airfares are pretty expensive right now, to boot. So I'm staying around home.

I've fretted that tomorrow, my day off, will be just like a work day except with less work. By that I mean I'll sit around all day in my home office, except sitting in front of my personal computer instead of my work computer, and maybe taking a long lunch. Well, I'm probably not going to figure out anything 180° around from that but I am thinking I could:

• Sleep in a bit
• Soak in the hot tub in the morning
• Do a shopping run to Costco
• Finish my taxes

Yes, finish my taxes. That's my plan for how to spend my day off— doing taxes.

Yay?

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #10
Back home - Sun, 9 Mar 2025, 8pm

I'm back home from my weekend working trip to Pasadena. Yes, I was working through the weekend. There was a trade show there that always runs through the weekend. The show finished up at 2pm today and I hurried to the airport. My flight at 3:45pm was a smidge late leaving the gate, but there was enough padding in the schedule that we landed at 4:50, ten minutes ahead of our scheduled arrival. Hawk came and picked me up, and I was in the car rolling away from the airport by 5:02pm.

From the airport we went straight to dinner. Hawk ate at my favorite, Giovanni's pizza, on Friday, so we had to pick something else. I agreed to her favorite, Speedy's Tacos, in exchange for a date to be named later (not too much later!) at Giovanni's. Speedy's was good, though, so it's not like I was sacrificing. Much.

We got home just after 6pm, and by 6:30 I'd unpacked my bag and put everything away. We then took a short period of time to decompress doing mindless things on our computers before going out to the hot tub together around 7pm. On this we took advantage of Daylight Saving Time on the first day of DST. Yesterday 7pm would've been well after sunset. Today at 7pm the sun was just dipping down behind the mountains west of us. It was a beautiful time for a soak in the hot tub. Yay, DST!

As I continue mentally unpacking from 3 days at the trade show I reflect on how random it was when people would come by. The busiest shift was the opening session Thursday afternoon. It's typical that the first session brings the greatest density of raw scans. Saturday and Sunday it was hard to predict when we'd see a rush of people. This conference didn't have well delineated break times or even obvious lunch breaks. In addition to giving attendees a time to eat without missing sessions, these breaks give them an opportunity to visit exhibitors without missing talks— which is important because the exhibitors fund most of the show's cost. And furthering the seemingly random element to the booth traffic, our best lead of the show came around midday today when things were otherwise dead.

In case you're wondering what "our best lead of the show" means, here are a few sales terms, defined:

• A lead is a person who visits our booth. We scan their badge with a handheld device (this shows it was an Android phone with a special camera attached and a custom app), and that captures their contact details to be shared with us. We also call these scans. Either way, these are the people we can follow up with after the show.


• Within the range of leads we talk about raw leads and qualified leads. These are two key metrics used in planning goals for, and measuring success of, a trade show.


• A raw lead is any kind of contact. It could be a swag hound who just wanted stickers, a USB adapter cable, or other merch we give away for free in exchange for badge scans. Raw leads are the basic metric but ultimately not the most important.


• A qualified lead is someone who spoke with us long enough to identify they come from an organization with a business-critical problem (i.e., one that's worth them spending money to fix) that our offerings have a shot at solving. It's something we believe will turn into a sales opportunity.

OMG, here I am talking shop on what little is left of my weekend. 😖 Okay, enough of that. I'll save elaborating on what opportunities and other downstream terms mean for another time. Because there really isn't much of my weekend left. Today was kind of like a 3/4 workday, one where I got to start late (9:30) and still finish at 5. And tomorrow's Monday, a full workday.

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #8
At the hotel - Sat, 8 Mar 2025, 8pm

Today was the long day at the trade show. The exhibits floor was open 10a-6p. That meant my colleagues and I were "on" for 8 hours. Coming off waking up at dumb o'clock this morning— dumb but not stupid; stupid o'clock was the day before— I figured I'd be tired by the end of it. And I was. But at least I was just tired, not totally trashed.

It was a good day on the show floor. We finished with 205 badge scans, 120 of them from today. And I enjoyed spending a few hours dressed as Jenkins the Butler. It was, as always, a good draw for conversations in our booth, plus just plain— well, as plain as possible when I'm wearing a tuxedo— fun.

I finished up the last few hours at the show back in Clark Kent disguise. I still had the mustache, though. ("Cuz it's real.) It cracked me up how many people excitedly told me, "Some guy was dressed up as Jenkins earlier, did you see him?!" My colleagues were amazed, too. We discussed how we always thought it was silly, like straining the bounds of disbelief, that Superman changes out of his Underoos and puts on a pair of glasses, and people are like, "OMG, mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, did you see where Superman went?" Now we know this really happens. 😳🤣😎

After the show Shawn (one of my colleagues at the booth) and I joined the team from the Jenkins booth and one of their spouses to go out for dinner. Shawn and I were feeling our oats from those 205 badge scans, so we half jokingly pushed for going to an expensive steak restaurant. With a very budget conscious manager from other booth signing the bill, though, we ended up at a much more modestly priced Japanese ramen shop. Dinner was good, and also ended early— which was also good. All of us were tired from a long day.

I got back to my room just before 8pm. Like I said, dinner finished early. We had one drink apiece, instead of the 3 or more that typify a business dinner.

I gave serious thought to catching up on those other 2 drinks on my own back here at the hotel. I even have a voucher for 2 free drinks in the hotel bar, a gift for my Marriott Lifetime Titanium elite status. It feels like sacrilege not to use it, but that's exactly what I'm going to do: not use it. I'm not 30 anymore. "Have 2 free drinks on us" is something I'm okaying passing up when I'm tired after a long day and I could just stay in my room, stretched out across the bed, instead. I mean, if there was a free drink in my room, I'd drink it. I just don't feel like going back downstairs for it.

Plus, getting to bed early tonight seems like a good plan. Tonight's the clock change for Daylight Saving Time. We lose an hour of sleep. Though with my body playing stupid get-up-early games recently, the time change means I'll probably wake up at 6:30 instead of 5:30. Thus I'll be happy getting to bed by 9:30 again tonight.

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #5
At the hotel - Fri, 7 Mar 2025, 6pm

Today has been a long day. It's only 6pm and already I'm exhausted. I'm thinking of blowing off dinner with a colleague and going to bed early.

Today didn't have to be quite so long, but I woke up stupid early, at 4am, for no good reason. I'd gone to bed early the night before. My body was like, "Aight, that's 6.5 hours, you've had enough sleep." 😖

I tried going back to sleep for a bit but it was obvious my circadian rhythms were jolted into playing accompaniment with getting up and doing things. So I got up and puttered around online, doing personal stuff I skipped the night before when I went to bed early thinking I was doing Friday-me a favor. Then I showered, dressed, got breakfast downstairs, and came back up to start my workday.

Work today didn't mean just heading over to the trade show. No, I had 3-4 hours of other stuff to do first! I did that then headed over about 11:15.

Originally my plan had been to break for a quick lunch then get to the show at 12 to set up the booth prior to the 2pm opening of the vendor expo. Yes, I'm on booth setup duty this time, something I rarely have to do. But this show I'm Booth Captain. It's a duty I neither sought nor want. But there are no marketing staff traveling out here for this show, just a few sales people who are local to the LA area, plus me flying down from Silicon Valley.

I'm glad I got there at 11:15 because all the various setup stuff I needed to do took longer than I expected. Plus, when I arrived there at 11:15 there was already a person I did not recognize who'd opened our boxes and was rifling through our stuff. 😳

"Hi, can I help you?" I asked loudly. The guy said he was with my company and setting up. "Oh, when did you join the company?" I continued, still speaking much louder than strictly necessary for a 1:1. If this guy was a thief I wanted the vendors setting up booths next to me, and the staff circulating nearby, to be aware of what was happening.

It turns out the guy, Bas, is technically with my company but was in the wrong place. I've mentioned before that we sell a variety of enterprise software tools, one of which is based on a popular open source project. Bas was hired to work more on the open-source side of things...  and he had the wrong booth, because the open source project has its own booth at this show! See, I paid attention during the pre-show briefing so I remember that detail.

With that sorted out, Bas still helped me set up my booth. It was a big help because the guy who was supposed to be there to help setup at 12, Shawn, didn't arrive until almost 1. We got all the setup done in time, though I didn't get an opportunity to duck out for lunch. Instead, fortunately, the convention center opened a hot food line just steps from our booth at 1:30. Shawn and I dodged over there for a quick lunch before attendees arrived. I got a couple slices of pretty disgusting pizza.

The afternoon show progressed fast at first. In 90 minutes we had over 70 scans. That was great because our goal for the whole show is, like, 100. But most of them were low-quality scans, from staff and attendees just looking to grab some swag. "If we hit 100 today dinner's at Fogo de Chão," I taunted the marketing manager who's managing this event from home in Boston.

For the next 90 minutes we kind of hit a slump. There was often no one visiting our booth, though booths closer to the front seemed to be busy.

Things picked up in the final hour. We had a few good conversations in the booth— conversations with people who weren't just swag hounds.

"Okay, that's it," Shawn announced at 5:55pm and started packing up. The show wasn't technically over until 6, but things had been slow for the last 15 minutes so I overlooked him usurping my rank as Booth Captain and joined in packing up. We walked out at 5:59. Might as well beat the rush! 😅

Five minutes later I was back at my room. I ❤️ these smaller trade shows where I don't have to walk a mile between the show floor and my room, like in Vegas. I kicked off my shoes, washed up, and flopped on the bed. Shawn and I had plans to meet for dinner at 7, but I've already texted him that I'm happy staying in for the night if he's not gung-ho about going out for dinner. He mentioned he was tired, too. We'll see what happens.

I don't care. I don't fucking care.

I say each of those two sentences a lot. I say them so much I created an abbreviation, DFC. Now I say "DFC" a lot. It's faster— 25% to 40% off syllables!— so it saves time. 😅

If you were in a room with me you might hear me muttering "DFC" under my breath a lot. I say it when I'm reading deleting work emails. I say it when I'm reading Slack messages. But it's not just at work; I also mutter DFC when reading deleting personal emails. Like, just a moment ago I had 12 unread messages in my personal email account. I deleted 11 as I skimmed through them. I think I said "DFC" twice. I mean, I could have said it 11 times. Sometimes I do that; saying "DFC" every time I press the delete key, like taking a verbal victory lap, but today it just seemed like overkill.

DFC. Use it. Say It. Be it. And enjoy clearing away the clutter.