Varifrank: D Minus 3

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D Minus 3

Business Travel. It’s a new level of Dante’s Inferno.

On Saturday I leave for Vienna for a conference. 16 hours of sitting in a hermetically sealed cigar tube which is optimally designed to create Deep Vein Thrombosis in people of my size, followed by two days of jet lag inspired grogginess while I sit in a room full of people and try to look interested when its clear to people sitting a mile away that I’m not and never would be. Worse still, I will be expected to attend all the schoomzing meetings and “mixers” after its over. Its one level of hell to attend a conference, its another level of hell to be forced to “have a good time”. I hate enforced corporate happiness. I have a solid wall between my private life and my work life; very rarely does anything pierce the wall from one world into the next. I don’t hang out with people I work with and I don’t work with people I hang out with, it’s a little rule that I have that helps keep things simple. It's a rule that every company I have worked for has tried to interfere with.

The nice thing about going to Vienna is I will have about half a day where I can try to see some of the things in The Third Man. Usually when you travel on business and it doesn’t matter where you go, you see the same three things, Car rental – Hotel – Client Basement. There is rarely time to get to know the place. In fact in all my travels as a consultant there was only one place I ever went back to after the project was over to visit; and that was Calgary Alberta.

Today is D Minus 3. This is the first day of the trip because as of today, this is the day I begin adjusting my internal clock to local time. Tonight I’ll stay up most of the night and over the next couple of days I'll begin living on "Central European Summer Time"( sounds like a summer replacement series on CBS during the 1970's, doesnt it?).

Over the years, I’ve found this process to be the best way to avoid jet lag when going east. I’ve never understood is why I have such a problem with jet lag when I go east and almost no problem when I go west. With this process, I don’t really avoid anything; I just start the pain earlier. Instead of a couple of days of being out of sync, I have one day where I just need a good nights rest. Unlike travel for holidays I’m traveling for business, and that means that when I’m presenting next week I’m “on stage”. I can’t afford to be dragging around while I adjust so I start doing the adjusting here in this time zone.

Holiday travel is all about letting go and relaxing, but business travel is all about ritual and superstition. Where’s my lucky jacket, my Laptop backpack, my “go” bag and so on. Things have to be “just so”. I’m surprised at the number of superstitions I’ve developed over the years, but they are there as well as the luggage. When you have over 750,000 miles on just one of the big carriers, you are always aware that with each flight the odds get better of a problem occurring. Air travel is very safe, but the actuarial tables don’t lie. Fly often enough long enough and something will certainly happen and after awhile you wonder “ is this the one that does me in”? So what do you do to alleviate the thoughts? That’s right, you go where all humans always go, a reliance on rituals and superstitious talismans that you have gathered over the years.

There was a time when I liked to go places for business. There was also a time when I had hair on my head too. I think that both of those things left me at about the same time, somewhere around the beginning of Clintons first term.

Over the next week I will try to blog daily on the experience of business travel to another country. This is in the spirit of the true nature of a “blog” which is to act as an online diary.

This is travel, not for pleasure, but for commerce.
This is work.
This is what it means to be a “Road Warrior”.

Posted @ September 20, 2005 11:16 PM | Current Affairs

Going east turns the clock back; going west turns it forward. Turning it forward is far less stressful. Try working in one of the industries with 24 hour processes. For some incredibly stupid reason the rotating shifts are often run counterclockwise, which has the same effect.

Posted by: triticale at September 21, 2005 05:02 AM

Uh, Frank, that's not the way it works. If the odds of having trouble on a flight are one in a billion, the odds of having trouble on this flight are still one in a billion no matter how often you've flown. The plane you're flying doesn't know what you've done in the past.

Look at it this way: if you're on a flight with someone else who has never flown before, the odds of an accident are the same for both of you.

Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at September 21, 2005 08:51 AM

I welcome social engagements while travelling on business. Usually, especially in the US, I spend most of my evenings channel surfing in the hotel room. When I do go sight seeing, it is at my own prompting and I'm usually alone.

Asian hospitality seems better than here. When I'm there, I usually get no rest. My hosts have activities for me every night.

About jet lag, I have the same experience. Big problems going East. Hardly any going West, even when the trip is a long way, like from China to California.

Posted by: Doug Purdie at September 21, 2005 09:30 AM

I hear what your saying, but this is where my thought comes from:

Im staying at a large casino resort. If I decide not to leave my room, my chances of winning a jackpot on the slot machines is as next to nil as can rationally be.

However, if I walk to the lobby and pull just one handle, my odds of winning a jackpot improve.

Now I recognize the truth of the "leibowitz" postualte that says "my odds of winning (the lottery) only slightly increase by playing" but they do in fact increase.

The way I think about it is this. Every flight is an orchestral recital that requires the composer of the music, every player and the conductor as well as every member of the audience to do a perfect job in the execution of the recital. Now, I may go to the recital and see a good show one saturday night with no missed notes or poor timing, but if I get a season pass, Im sure to see a bad performance at some point in the year.

I'm a pilot, Ive built my own plane, I am by no means afraid to fly, but I recognize and deeply respect the huge effort that goes into the creation of a safe commercial flight, and yeah, even though intellectualy Im aware of the way the odds work, I still look at every flight as a near miracle.

I also recognize that while the odds might be long, they are by no means guaranteed.

Posted by: varifrank at September 21, 2005 01:13 PM

Right. Here's your mistake: when you go down to the slot machine, your odds of winning a million dollar jackpot don't change because you've won a million dollar jackpot in the past. The point is that if you fly a billion air miles, you expectation might be that you will have been in at least one accident. But if you haven't been in an accident, your chances of being in one on your next flight aren't any different from anyone else's.

Let's actually think about the example at the end of my note. let's say you are taking a flight, and on the flight there's someone else who has never flown before. Now, if your interpretation were correct, your chances of being in an accident on the flight would be much greater than the newbie; but since you can't be in a flight that's involved in an accident and the other person not be involved in an accident, the chances of you both being in an accident have to be the same. They both can't be true, but its obvious that everyone on the plane has to have the same chance of being in an accident on that flight. Thus your assumption has to be wrong.

if it's any comfort to you, I'm not arguing that you're afraid to fly, though — just that you're making a math mistake.

Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at September 21, 2005 02:27 PM