I’m ambivalent about work travel. For those of you in the know, the word ambivalent is the opposite of indifferent. Part of me likes it, part of me does not. Being someone who works from home I don’t mind it really as it is an opportunity to get out of the house. But it rarely brings me to amazing places. Either way, this is part of life and I’m ok with it. The majority of the time I can work in a full length Spiderman suit and nobody would know. That has to be worth something.
That said, I like to look at these trips as retreats, in a sense. To me, this is about doing what you have to do, then doing whatever you want with the rest of the time. That usually means biking, going to coffee shops, eating good food, reading, writing, and watching TV. I like to just imbibe in the small things in life that I enjoy. Because of that, I tend to want to avoid my coworkers and the extracurricular activities that often go with work travel. Being that I don’t drink, the idea of hanging around with people I’m not actually friends with, eating mediocre food, and forcing conversation while getting drunk does not appeal to me.
This isn’t to say that I don’t like these people in general. But 8 hours is enough. I like the remaining hours of my days to be solo, freeing me to do the things I want to do.
With that, we begin another trip. The day starts in New Jersey with snow on the ground. This unexpected blanket covers the ordinarily blah winter landscape and makes everything look a hint better this morning. I pack after I get up, load the car, and walk out the door at 8:30.
I drive without the GPS for a while, because it prevents me from hyper-focusing on the miles-to-go. I listen to Reamde on the drive, which manages to keep me entertained in between all the stops today. My first call is at 9:00 but it only lasts 3 minutes. The second may require a screen share so I pull into the Walt Whitman rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike and setup camp for that possibility. In the end I don’t need to, and I’m back on the road by 10:15. There’s also a call at 11:00 but I skip it, because it’s non-critical. Otherwise my day is free to drive.
I arrive at Patapsco Valley State Park just after 12:00, then eat my lunch of a Clif bar, a banana, and a clementine. I haven’t done much today and I know that later I’ll reward myself with a good dinner. Plus, I have no food and I only passed a Rite Aid from the highway which I use to pee and grab a gallon of water. Not much there other than candy.
I hit the trails here following a route I pulled from the Trailforks link, which ends up being a mix of good and horrible. This route must be 10 years old as some of these trails are now closed, and others are so shitty that I wouldn’t send my enemies on them. The park seems to have some solid work, but there are times where it appears nobody has done any work in 15 years. There’s a section that’s heavily rock armored but looks to have been done 20 years ago and hasn’t been maintained since.
The park confuses me. It appears that there’s some solid attention being paid to it, then at times it dumps you into a shit hole of a trail. I don’t get it. The route I picked was a bad choice, as every good trail was rewarded with something mediocre, or downright bad. I feel like there must be a solid loop in here but I’ll be damned if this is it.
I expected to be done at 3:00 latest but I finish up at 3:30. Still, the day is plenty young.
The Strava link can be found here. Getting 2.5 hours of riding outside on January 6th is a solid day.
Despite running longer than I planned, the GPS says I’ll get to the Airbnb at 5:00. It’s a bit later than I expected but so what? What else do I have to do? As I’m driving though, my hunger starts to rise with the combination of a small lunch and a bigger ride, so I call an audible and decide to get dinner first, then worry about the rest of the day from there.
I land at Shin Se Kai for dinner. Don’t ask me what process I used to figure out where to go, because I did this a week or 2 ago and don’t recall now. I will say that I tend to gravitate towards ramen places when I travel because first, it’s good, and second, it is 1 of my 3 anchors of travel. I don’t know if I’ve talked about the anchor concept before but it goes like this.
Whenever I travel I like to establish my 3 anchors if at all possible. They are as such:
1. Biking
2. Coffee houses
3. Ramen
These 3 things “anchor” me when I’m away. They provide some sense of normalcy when I’m in some random house or hotel. They allow me to have a sense of familiarity when I’m faced with general chaos. I think wrapping your head around something like this allows you to travel without being exhausted. So many people say that travel tires them out, when in reality, travel is a great opportunity to catch up on a lot of things you can’t do at home due to time constraints.
I get the ramen with miso broth, and an extra egg and extra pork. It’s good, maybe even pretty good. I don’t know why, but the corn is actually tasty in this. Why does corn work here? I don’t know. In the end I didn’t finish the noodles because I was full. When you get to that point, you always leave the noodles, as this is what goes out the window first. Never leave broth. Never.
The next stop is Whole Foods, where I stock up on the various things I’ll need for the week. As I’m saving the company $450 by not staying at the hotel, I take the opportunity to buy some basics like fruit, oatmeal, dessert, and some snacks, as well as some seltzer to drink. I think this is only fair because I’m forced to eat out every day. This not only saves the company money but it keeps me healthier and happier.
This was a long day. I get to the Airbnb, unpack the car, then jump in shower. I’m out in time for the 7:30 NICA call, which means that this day was 11 hours from door to (shower) door. That’s a lot of air time, so to speak. I then put away my groceries as the call starts.
I spend the rest of the night trying to settle into my space, which is different here compared to a hotel room. Every place is different, some have better things and some worse. This is a solid little studio with everything I could ask for. It’s actually a bit more spacious than I expected, which is a good thing. Still, I end up moving things around for the next few hours trying to find the right “home” for each thing. This is not always easy.
And so, day 1 of 4 is in the books. I don’t really know how the rest of this week is going to go. I guess we shall see!
Traveling Normandy 