I haven’t traveled nearly as much as I’d like. Here’s where I’ve been in the U.S. and in the world (U.S. and Switzerland). In six months these are going to look a lot different, with a cross country road trip planned as well as heavy foreign travel. Much more on this, later.
(Create your own maps here. Thanks to Dan Drezner for link.)
Given that Switzerland is the only country I’ve been to — I spent three weeks in Zurich last summer as part of an SF-Zurich partnership — I consider myself part-Swiss. I loved it. My friend Massimo Chiasera from Zurich sent me The Xenophobe’s Guide to the Swiss. It’s hilarious, thin, tongue-in-cheek, and a largely accurate portrait of Swiss people, culture, government, land, etc. I wish I had read it before going there! Apparently there is a whole series of "Xenophobe’s Guide to…" and I will be sure to pick them up before I travel again this summer.
A nice respite from tackling the thick works of Benjamin Friedman’s Moral Consequences of Economic Growth and Richard Posner’s Sex and Reason.
Thanks Massimo!
I don’t get to Arizona much so if you or a colleague are in that area and want to meet up, send me an email.
I’m not sure where my fascination with business travel comes from, but nevertheless I loved Joe Sharkey’s latest dispatch in the NYT. I think everyone admits that when they were in their 20’s they flew all over the world just to accumulate miles…hey, if you got a comfortable seat and a good book, it’s not so bad!
Link: Why I Looked a Mileage Run in the Eye and Blinked – New York Times.
Several weeks ago, I wrote a column describing my anxiety at finding myself considerably short of the 75,000 annual miles needed to requalify for top Platinum elite status next year on Continental Airlines, the domestic airline I fly most on business. Top-level status gets you a lot of perks, not the least of which is regular upgrades to first class from the cheap coach tickets I buy.
With the year running out, I consulted the mileage-run forum on Randy Petersen’s Flyertalk.com Web site, and made contact with a young man who gives seminars on how to design mileage runs. For a fee of $34, this young man custom-designed for me a brilliant itinerary on Continental – 21,000 miles in three exhaustive days, Newark to Guam and back with connections through Houston and Tokyo. The total fare: $703.
There are maybe a FEW people for whom this makes sense. But I’m incredulous that people would go against consistent and irrefutable research about the effect of little sleep on performance. It’s a marathon, folks.
Link: Constant Travelers Wear Their All-Nighters as a Badge of Pride – New York Times.
Mr. Stevens belongs to a hardy breed who set themselves apart by their embrace of sleepless nights. Most travelers view insomnia as an affliction: 41 percent of those questioned in January by the Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell/Yankelovich Partners National Business Travel Monitor said they did not get enough sleep on business trips, and 29 percent said they did not sleep well.
The mavericks, by contrast, not only welcome the condition, they nurture it and say they thrive on it.