Fresh back...

When I first starting working I remember being really drawn into the glamour of business travel - the corporate credit card, the nice hotels, the exotic locales, the suits, the business cards, the idea of being out in the world and being a "professional." I think everyone who doesn't travel for a living goes through that phase because there *is* a certain glamour and cache that applies to air travel when one doesn't have to do it all that often.

I used to run into the road warriors on my scattered travels and would marvel at their lives - running from city to city, being so important that they were on the phone everywhere (In teh waiting room! In the bathroom! On the plane! Right before the door closes! Every minute of productivity counts!), knowing the airport system so well that they knew how to get an exit row seat, when to fight it the delay, and when to fly stand by. I would look at them with a certain sense of envy for not having a back pack and a bulky purse, but instead having rollerboards that fit in the overhead compartment and laptop cases that snapped right on top.

Somewhere along the line I learned, as everyone must, what those road warriors knew by rote - that flying isn't fun when you have to do it all the time and that getting back to normal life is actually kinda nice.

After my first year of pretty regular travel, I understood what those road warriors were always complaining about - the wasted time (especially back in the day before ubiquitous WiFi), the delays, the endless bad food options, the inability to do anything normal - like watch your shows off the Tivo (or Replay, should you so desire), or do the laundry - the inability to schedule anything, because you always were in danger of being "out of town."

I think after the disappointing fall from glamorous grace, but after the patch of incessant complaining about how "nobody knows the trouble you've seen," what you really find at the heart of the road warrior that makes them such a unique animal is their set of coping mechanisms. You see that people learn the four or five things that make traveling more comfortable, and adopt them as MLB-level superstitious pre-flight rituals. I always pack my own lunch now, before I fly anywhere. Others bring pillows, or blankets, or a change of clothes, will only sit in a window, or an aisle, or a bulkhead, or will refuse (so help them Stewardess) to check anything through to the other end.

Having just completed a long two week trip I am starting to realize how fascinating it would be to collect and catalogue all those superstitions and to hear the stories (invariably horror stories, no doubt) that made these warriors into the travelers they are - kind of a catalogue of their war medals, in a way. If I didn't despair so much when someone talked to me on a plane, I would be interested to know - "What's your travel ritual? How did that come about?"

Nothing makes you as annoyingly contemplative as 20+ hours on a plane...