Wednesday September 23, 7:50 PM (Mountain time)
Having just landed at Denver and made the commute along concourse B to my next flight (just how long is that concourse? Forget being mile high – mile long is more like it), I have just enough time for a shot of caffeine, a quick blog and a restroom stop before the next leg of my journey (not necessarily in that order).
So far this has been been a fairly typical trip – no time to eat a decent meal, sardine tin-like seating on the plane, and a pile of work to get through on the way.
Actually, despite the griping, I must confess that I secretly enjoy traveling. Okay so it usually leaves me drained and dysfunctional. But on the other hand, it does give me the chance to chill out for a few hours with a good book and some decent music. For today’s little jaunt, and I’m a little ashamed to admit this, I’m reading Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol – absolute tosh, but enjoyable absolute tosh! Okay, so maybe I used the word “good” rather liberally, but several hours on a plane/waiting for a plane is an opportunity to catch up with a long reading list of books I’d like to read.
Unfortunately though – and this is a little sad – Dan Brown is the reward part of this trip: it’s what I get to indulge in when the work’s done. Yes, just because I’m not in the office doesn’t mean that the day job goes away! On this last leg, I was reviewing a draft book chapter on nanotechnology cosmetics regulation. After a couple of hours of that, Dan Brown’s books are positively attractive!
The easy read is part of a travel survival kit I’ve amassed over the years – my life support systems in a backpack. This includes the laptop of course. Then there’s a Sony eBook – containing the books I feel I should read, alongside the ones that I want to. And for those times when electronics when I can’t use electronic devices on the plane, a paperback backup (which, frustratingly, I forgot on this trip).
The kit also includes a decent personal sound system. Forget those nasty MP3-players with tinny earphones – this is an area where compromise is a no-no. So I carry a compact pair of Etymotic Research ER4 headphones (small, light, cut out background noise, and provide studio quality sound), together with a separate audiophile headphone amplifier from the company Headroom. These are all fed by lossless music files on my iPhone.
A geek, moi? Noooo. (And I haven’t even got to the camera I carry with me – the final part of the survival kit!).
Obsessive as it seems, these are the small comforts that make travel bearable at times.
But less of these ramblings. I have a plane to catch to Grand Junction – my next stop of the day.
Follow the whole “On The Road” saga at http://2020science.org/category/on-the-road-again/
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I have this fear for you that on arrival you will be forcibly equipped with red-white neckerchief, stetson, and forced to eat roasted hog.
In my travelling days – a whole year or so ago, the iPhone was an HP pocket pc loaded up with homely Brit. TV show – Dimbleby on buildings or such like; a kind of hard re-set to be applied (normally in the bath) in counter of the well-intentioned surreality inflicted by alien hosts.
Travelling and meeting interesting people like this is extreme fun. And if you are trying to hide that in some way – you are totally failing
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No neckerchief, but we have dined well on gourmet ribs, steak and burgers (that “gourmet” is genuine btw – possibly the best burgers I’ve had!). But the really embarrassing confession is that, having forgotten to bring my hat with me, I’m now the proud owner of a new Stetson!
I’ve never understood why people hate O’Hare in Chicago (a reasonable airport with a layout you can understand at a glance and sprint through with ease – it’s a semi-circle, folks, on one level) and love the Denver airport. First there’s your landing – in the vicinity of what seems to be a piece of carrot cake with waaaaay too much cream cheese icing (airport roof). Then there’s the crazy subway you have to take for reasons no one ever explains. And then the half-mile-long moving sidewalks. When leaving Denver one time my flight had been rebooked with another airline during the week I’d spent camping at Steamboat Springs. And naturally the other airline was at the extreme other end of the airport. Having been camping, I wasn’t travelling light – and came very close to missing my flight due to the trek through the airport itself.
Oh but you have to admit, the place does have style – even if it is a pain at times!
I realized reading your post that, despite the gender democratization of skin care habits, men’s survival kits continue to be different from the arsenal carried by women when traveling. Things like moisturizing cream, lip balm and wipes are always on the top of my survival kits. The dryness we experience inside a plane is not a joke. You can’t focus on a draft chapter if your lips are cracking and you feel your facial skin outstretched. Wet tissues are also welcome when you feel your hands sticky but you don’t want to bother the hip-replaced old lady sited by your side.
Oh, shame on me for conforming to such outdated stereotypes! I thought I was a new man – clearly I still have some way to go