Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I'm in Newport Beach, California for a few days of intensive sales training. The training hasn't even started yet— it's on Wednesday and Thursday— but the partying has. ...I know, I wrote yesterday that this trip is not a boondoggle. But last night we went out to a fancy-ish restaurant on the coast, Javier's. The valet parking was full of high end luxury and sports cars. The restaurant was full of people in their see-and-be-seen attire; a style I only see in certain places where wealth and vanity collide like in Southern California.

I was hoping for a not-late night last night. I even seriously considered blowing off the group dinner. But I decided to go because the group seemed small enough. There were just 12 of us. Well, dinner was languidly paced at the packed, fancy restaurant. We had drinks. Then simple appetizers. Then bigger appetizers. Then full dinner plates. I estimate my end would've been $175 all-in if I were paying my own bill. And we didn't get back to the hotel until almost 11pm. So much for my idea of a not-late night. I had been hoping we might be done with dinner early enough for me to take a dip in the hot tub before 10!

Getting back to my room at 11pm was bad enough— considering I was up, sick half the night the night before— but then, because it's a business trip and I'm in an unfamiliar bed, or possibly because I'd eaten too much food too late, I couldn't get to sleep right away. I tossed and turned until about 12:30. And this morning I was up at 5:30 for a 6:30am meeting before the all-day training sessions. Ugh.

Italy Travelog #29½
Somewhere near Greenland - Saturday, 31 May 2025, ??pm

We're aboard a flight on Level airlines from Barcelona to San Francisco. Have you never heard of Level before? Yeah, neither had we until a few weeks ago. When we booked these tickets 7-8 weeks ago Level was a subgroup of Iberia Air. Since then they've started flying on their own license. Apparently they're yet-another low-cost European carrier.

What does Level being a low-cost European carrier mean? It means practically everything is an extra charge. You want to pick seats before T-24 check-in time? That costs. (We paid $110 to select half-decent seats 8 weeks ago.) You want a cup of soda? That costs €3. Even a bottle of water costs. That's €2. Somehow we booked on tickets that include basic food and drink— but some of those around us are having to swipe credit cards just to get a shitty airline sandwich.

But, hey, by ponying up an extra $110 several weeks ago Hawk and I at least made sure we have seats together, aisle-window (on an Airbus 330 the seat config is 2-4-2), instead of two scattered middles like on the way out here. OTOH, they are still tight seats, and it's a long flight— scheduled at 13 hours!



It's interesting that our flight path takes us over the tip of Greenland. That's where I think we are right now, anyway. This aircraft's entertainment options don't include a real-time flight map. In fact the entertainment options pretty much suck. And headphones cost €2. And there's no personal device based entertainment. For an airline that just got its license a few weeks ago, their tech is surprisingly 10 years old.

The impact of this old tech is that this is turning into a long flight. There's no worthwhile TV/movies to watch, there's no internet. And it's too early to sleep. We're just 5.5 hours into this flight, less than halfway there, and already I'm ready for it to be over.

This afternoon I flew to Phoenix. I'm in town for 26 hours, flying home tomorrow at 6:30pm. In between now and then I'll meet colleagues for dinner tonight ahead of a meeting with a major customer tomorrow.

This trip comes hot on the heels of returning from Club on Saturday evening. I haven't even finished blogging about that trip. Now, after 1/2 day at work, I'm back on the road again.

I considered making this a same-day, out-and-back trip to Phoenix. My customer meeting tomorrow is late enough that I could have caught a morning flight SJC-PHX and gotten to their office in time. ...In time if the flight is mostly on-time. Which... who knows. Things went super smooth with my trip today. I left home for SJC airport at 1:15pm, caught a 2:30 flight, landed at 4:30, and arrived at my hotel just after 5. But who knows if a morning flight tomorrow would go as smoothly. Flying out to Phoenix today heads off the possibility of scheduling trouble there.

The tradeoff, of course, is that traveling today means a night away from home. I discussed this tradeoff with Hawk when I was booking reservations two weeks ago. "You should totally go out the day before and have dinner with your colleagues," she answered.

Being in Phoenix tonight isn't just about dinner with colleagues. That dinner will be a working dinner, BTW. We'll discuss plans for how to present in a lengthy meeting with a major customer tomorrow. And being here tonight also means that instead of spending tomorrow morning traveling I can join & participate in some important internal meetings.

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.