Life on the Road

For the better part of the two years of 2002 and 2003, I traveled for work and lived on the road.  What does that mean?  It means we worked 80 and sometimes 100 hour weeks and traveled from city to city throughout the country and worked and lived in hotels.  Sometimes we stayed in the same city for a week or maybe two and more often it was two or three cities in one week.  We slept little.

I joined the subcontractor to the TSA in April 2002 just as the organization was taking shape.  It was a very chaotic, stressful, confusing development.  The SOPs were being written and revised daily.  Our roles were changing by the minute.  The instruction was to tell no one in each city who we were working for or what we did, which was sort of silly when a group of 50 of us descended upon the bush in Alaska for example; they knew who we were before we arrived.  We worked and slept under secured floors.  We ate when we could steal the time.

It was an extraordinary experience, both professionally and personally.  It challenged every logical process in our brains and every emotional thread of our beings.

With all the traveling, my packing, airport navigation and hotel comfort skills were tightly honed.  And my bank account and mileage accounts were aplenty.  This was back in the day when an upgrade to business or first was often a handful of miles or another $50-$75.  This is how I traveled, taking advantage of any additional comfort available to me.

Once I left the project for the second time, I needed to travel for myself.  I took a few shorter trips and returned to Argentina each year for the next three years.  All the while accumulating miles and upgrading.  Then I cut way back on travel and used up my miles on the next handful of trips and gave my parents a couple of flights out to visit.

Here it is, several years later and I am traveling, albeit a short trip.  As I move through the airports, I notice I lack urgency.  I listen to those whisking past me, "I'll reach out to an architect on the team," "The program needs some modifications for the client."  The conversations overheard on the hotel shuttle bus are tense and curt.  I climb the bus with spring in my steps and song on my voice and they look at me with a cocked inquisitive head.  There is nothing about what I see that intrigues me or that tempts me back.  In fact, quite the contrary.  It affirms that I am doing what I love just where I am.

What do I miss about that lifestyle?  The upgrades.  Economy is rough.