On the Road
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As you read this I'm heading to the airport, or maybe even on a plane, getting ready for a day long, and I do mean long, journey from Denver to Cambridge, UK. It's the first time I'm heading there to meet with the folks at Red Gate, shakes hands with quite a few people that I email with on a regular basis, and touch base with the company paying my salary for the better part of a year.
And I'm not thrilled about it. I'm less of a fan of traveling every year and especially long trips. What's funny is that everyone in my family wishes they could go. I tried to substitute my wife for me, but with no horses at Red Gate and her lack of understanding what I do, I'm stuck with the trip.
I used to be interested in traveling when I was younger, especially car trips. I used to enjoy taking car trips around the US and I've driven across the country 5 times. I used to like driving down to North Carolina for work. Now that I think about it, maybe it's just flying, which is an incredibly annoying way to travel.
There was a thread last week on what questions to ask in an interview for the interviewee. What should you ask when you get the chance? One of my big ones is travel and it's always funny when I ask it. I rarely apply for jobs that have anything above 10% listed. Since people usually err on the high side, 10% often ends up being two or three trips a year.
However I usually ask the question as a "what are the travel requirements?" kind of question. And people never really know how to answer it, which is what I intend. I don't want to lead people into giving me the answer I want to hear; I want to hear what they think.
I interviewed with Raytheon years ago for a position with their Polar Services team. That's the team that runs the South Pole base in Antarctica. Things were going well when I asked the question. There were looks around the room and they said that everyone can go spend a summer there (Nov-Mar) if they want, but if there were issues, they could fly me down there for a couple days and then bring me back.
My answer was something to the effect I wouldn't travel to the South Pole for a couple of days and they backtracked a little at that point. I ended up not taking the job for other reasons and I'm glad I never had to refuse the request to go down there.
So ask what's important to you in an interview. Now I'm stuck traveling after having delayed and avoided this trip for about 6 months now. Hopefully my upgrade will come through and it won't be a bumpy flight.
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Is it a good idea to say on a public forum (owned by your employers) that you don't want to go and meet them?
Cambridge is a lovely lovely place tho. e.g.: http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=sq0qsnh08p8t&style=o&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=4260619&encType=1
Make sure they take you punting.
-Jamie
Jamie Thomson
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson -
Hi Steve,
I travel a lot these days as well. I hope you have a safe and happy flight.
:{> Andy
Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics
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Antartica for a couple days would be awesome. I'd be scared the whole way there and back, but it would be worth it.
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Take a lot of reading material or things to keep busy - even flying from Ohio to Gatwick was a long flight.
For me, any travel for work would seem minor compared to the traveling I've got ahead of me for meeting family. Next year, I'm headed to Hong Kong to meet my husband's grandma, and probably a year or two later - depending on finances - we'll be heading to Australia for me to meet the rest of my husband's family.
So I definitely understand the "joys" of long flights. Try to make the best of it and keep a sense of humor about things and it should go well.
Good luck over there!
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I have your dislike of flying (though I don't mind driving that much).
HOWEVER, if a job EVER offered me a few days in Antarctcia I couldn't imagine turning that down. Even if cold climes are not your thing (I like warm weather) that would seem to be the experience of a lifetime.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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It's not that Steve doesn't like his employer, it's just the worry over the initiation he'll have to go through. Brian & I suspect it involves some type of Red Gate tattoo!
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For me it isn't really the travel - I love visiting new places, seeing sites, eating the food. It is the uncomfortable beds that I had to sleep in and the jet lag of going outside my timezone that I despise.
I was in the US Navy earlier in my life and this was just about right. I had my own rack to sleep in and the shipped moved slow enough that we rarely crossed more than one or two timezones a day. Plus we were on rotating shift watchstanding anyway.
One sea story does ring a bell here. Talk about timelag, once I was above the article circle for the whole month of June somewhere north of Norway - this was in cold war years. Never saw the sun go down for the whole month of June. Saw plenty of ice bergs. Standing rotating shifts. Once I awoke at 3 O'clock. I walked out on deck in the sunlight. I had no frame of reference to tell me if it was 3 AM or 3 PM - no temperature (it was almost always 40-50 degrees F), no day-night reference (the sun was always up), and no body reference (my body was on a 15 hour schedule of 5 on watch, 10 hours off). It was the weirdest feeling being awake at 3 O'clock and not knowing whether it was middle of the night or middle of the afternoon. I'll always remember that moment of complete day-night disorientation.
I think you should have gone to Antartica! Talk about cool! (pardon the pun).
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Pass, I got a lot of emails and the story on going down to Antarctica (and get more every baseball season), but it's not for me.
I pack my own pillow for sleeping and have books, a laptop, an iPod and more! Leaving now for the airport. Take care of the site for me
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Steve, I hate to break it to you, but you're getting whiny in your old age. Last year was kind of a slow travel year for me... I only made enough points for Continental's Gold Elite status.
This year will be even slower, so I may not be able to send my younger brother to Hawaii again on frequent flyer miles when he finishes the PhD. But the upside is that I get to spend even more time tormenting the wife and kids. Heh.Suck it up, big guy, and show some spine! Your kids will be reading this forum someday, after all.
I can't believe you turned down an opportunity to hunt penguins!! Geez. So I'm guessing that you'll turn down the invitation to take an Alaskan cruise with us next spring, eh?My wife and kids are squirming through the "new-and-improved" US Passport acquisition process so that we can all enjoy Madrid together if/when my team wins the "Fun in the Sun" this year. I haven't told them that we're stopping for a two-day visit to the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire on the way. A visit to The World's Worst Weather® should keep things in Barcelona in perspective, eh?
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My intense dislike and dread of flying is overshadowed completely by my obsessive compulsive passion for travel. 'Sides, it is the only way to get to some places and seeing as I have to go all the way to India to visit family there's little I can do about that..and talk about "loooooooooong"...
Steve...weren't you in sunny Cancun a while ago...what'd you use to get there... telekinesis ?!?!
Re Antarctica: I'm with Jay - an opportunity of a Lifetime regardless of whether it's your cup of tea or not..
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
As someone that has had to renew passport early a couple of times due to it filling up....
Flying is no fun anymore. And no not because of the security here in the US after 9/11/2001, it is just now getting up to where it has been in the rest of the world for ages. But the planes are full, the airports are packed, flights are late all the time. Most of the US airlines are flying with record load factors (some are approaching 90% of all seats filled), it just makes for no fun.
Heck I've had all kind of "fun" experiences travelling. Worst was having a machine gun pointed at me in the basement of the airport in Malaga. Luckily I was there with one of the flight crew in full uniform, so we got out of it fairly easily.
I've been stranded at Newark for 36 hours before. That was fun. This was in the mid to late 80s. Since a snowstorm had just hit, there was nowhere to get a bite to eat. Finaly some Continental pilot that was also stranded there took pity on me and took me to their pilot lunch for a few snacks and a drink.
I've had to fly Oslo-Newark-Denver-Omaha then rent a car, even though all I wanted was to get to Minneapolis.
Slight detour!Now I like to stay where I am as much as possible. I have friends that travel every week for consulting gigs, not sure I could do it anymore.
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Driving from Houston up to Redmond and back with the family earlier this year was fun (in an exhausting sort of way)... but we took eight days each way to do the trek. Several decades ago, I would've been up for trying to do it in less than two days, but I'm far from twenty-something now.
Driving is certainly more fun than being "ATC delayed" in O'Hare three out of four flights a month last year. (ATC delay seems to be a euphemism for "we don't have enough controllers to let planes land or take off safely, so you can be patient or not, it matters not to us.") But I'm willing to wait an extra couple or six hours if it means that I don't have to sleep an extra night in Chicago!! LAX was pretty unpleasant, too. They'd have to put in me in handcuffs and leg irons to get me to Newark or ATL again. Tulsa's OK; cheaper than XNA anyway.
Some airports are better than others. IAH, JAX, LAS and SEA are pretty good, compared with the rest of the bunch that I've been in and out of.
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That's what America is all about
* Noel -
For a large pilot project at a previous job I travelled from Toronto to LA 8 times in about 4 months. Flight out early Monday AM, back home in TO late Friday night. Spend one week in the office and then back to LA. Sucked. Got to see downtown Pasadena once. Whilst driving my boss out to the airport took a detour on Rodeo drive and saw David Soul walking around. Saw Pat Sajak at the airport, too, looking pissed about something. Other than that, mostly saw the inside of a large office building and got to know the room service menu of the local Embassy Suites pretty well.
That's the typical problem with business travel: you rarely get to see the place aside from the client site.
Antarctica, though -- sign me up...
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