Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, Illinois at the start of what’s looking like 6 weeks of straight travel. In this episode, we talk about the need to have a place to blow off steam after a frustrating day of travel, and how the distractions of cell phone calls have caused me to leave a trail of personal belongings behind in hotel and airplanes across the country. Finally, while getting a knowing chuckle out of  the trailer for the upcoming movie Up In The Air where George Clooney plays an uber-frequent traveler, the movie’s theme about using travel to run away from relationships isn’t all that fictional.

Here’s a direct link to the podcast file.

Here are the transcript from TravelCommons podcast #78:

• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, Illinois. It was a light travel week for me this week – just out to Philadelphia for Tuesday, Weds, and Thurs and then back to Chicago, but a heavy work week, which unfortunately pushed this episode of TC out from my intended recording date of Weds, Sept 30th to today.
• Looking at my calendar, I find myself in the midst of one of my 6-week-straight sets of travel. It started 2 weeks ago when I had to be in LA and DC the same week – I just hate doing the transcon thing in the middle of the week. Last week was Philadelphia and NYC – not too bad. Next week, DC and Boston, then another week in Philadelphia, and then another LA and DC week. The way it’s looking, I’m going to be traveling every week until Thanksgiving.
• Which is, of course, the perfect time for my suitcase to break. I think I mentioned a couple episodes ago that the bearing on one of the wheels is shot, giving me a nice “Squeak, Squeak” soundtrack as I walk down the airport concourse or go trundling through a prospect’s office space as I did last week in NYC. It was embarrassing – lots of “prairie dogging” – heads popping up from the cube field, looking to see who’s making that annoying sound. There’s a sure-fire sales technique for you.
• But now one of the handle supports has broken, making the suitcase twist every time I pull it onto a plane or cross a street, and making it just about impossible to attach my computer bag to it. So I’m going to have to suck it up and buy a new suitcase.
• It’s not like I haven’t gotten a lot of mileage out of this bag – 6 years at, say, 100,000 miles a year. Or that it cost me a lot – maybe $200 at a TJ Maxx. And it’s held up better than a colleague’s $700 Tumi – his is only 4 yrs old and last week dropped an entire wheel sub-assembly – the wheel and all the surrounding bits that keep it in the bag – while he was sprinting for a flight in LGA.
• No, it’s just the hassle. And how excited can you get shopping for my umpteenth black 22-inch rolling bag. Maybe I’ll go for a new color – something that will stand out in the overhead bin, something that will express some individuality – something like, I dunno, navy blue!
• Bridge Music — Making Circles by the Seldon Plan

Following Up

• Sometimes when you’re traveling and things start to go sideways, you want to vent – just blow off your frustration – but to whom? Certainly not to any airline personnel – at best, you’ll be ignored; at worst, you’ll be kicked off the plane and/or arrested. If you’re traveling with a colleague, you can kvetch a bit, but too much and you look like a whiner – not a reputation that will propel you far up the career ladder.
• For me, Twitter has become a little bolt hole into which I can scream my frustrations – from broken United planes to the conga line of frustrations that is Washington’s Dulles airport, I package my woes up in 140 characters and shove them into the Twitter-verse. Has probably made a few of you guys “un-follow” me, but that’s OK. It’s a small price to avoid getting busted by those gentle and caring guys who populate the Chicago police force.
• For Lori Humm, a longtime TravelCommons listener, the TravelCommons comments section can provide a needed outlet. Reacting to the latest addition to the TSA’s security play-acting, Lori writes…

Mark – I’m about to lose my mind. Apparently, my airport, Richmond, is about to be the test bed for ANOTHER level of security. We already have the body scanning machines and now this – screening of powders.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the addition of powders to security, especially given your pride (and constant defense of) your tooth powder! I moved to using all powder cosmetics to avoid carrying any liquids at all, and am starting to resign myself to being make-up free if that’s what it take to avoid being sidelined for additional screening.

By the way – still doing the Richmond-to-Baton Rouge weekly haul – this makes my 15th month. If that doesn’t make someone lose their mind, this additional screening certainly will.

• You know the TSA just doesn’t get it when they announced the powder screening as Implementing New Enhanced Threat Detection Capability . In the TSA’s blog, Blogger Bob, as defensive and oblivious as usual, says “We haven’t received any specific threats that led us to this new procedure” , but we thought it made sense to put in place some new annoyances for travelers and get some practice in before the holidays. Just kidding – about the last bit. Blogger Bob did actually write that, unlike the liquid ban, there’s nothing specific that caused them to launch this powder parade accompaniment to the shoe carnival. I’m not so sure that my snarky annoyance comment is too far from the truth.
• But, having said that, I’ve yet to see anybody get flagged over for a powder check. I have seen a bit of an increase in random wipe-&-tests – the guy behind me Tuesday at Midway had his shoes wiped and I had my computer bag wiped at ORD last month, but that’s not a big thing. No unpacking and re-packing bags, no rustling through your toiletries kit – just a couple wipes on the outside surface with a test pad and they run it through what I guess is some sort of spectrograph. Takes 1 minute – they’re usually done before I get my shoes re-tied.
• I gotta say, though, that the tougher part of that note is the 15 straight months of flying between Richmond and Baton Rouge. I may complain a bit about flying from LA to DC, but 15 months of connecting through Atlanta, think about it – Hartsfield twice a week – I’m not sure anybody should be hassling Lori about anything.
• And the final follow-up, we’ve have an ongoing thread through it seems like most of this year’s episodes about in-flight electronics. Flying out here to Philadelphia on Southwest Tuesday morning – OK, I know that I said that I wouldn’t fly SW again for a long time after they left me hanging in Little Rock, but they’ve got a double credit promo going right how and I have 12 flight credits in the bank, so with this trip, I’ll get the 4 more credits I need for a free ticket, which I’ll then give to my mother for a spring trip to visit us, so, in the vein of “don’t cut your nose off to spite your face”, suck it up if you’re close to a free ticket.
• So, anyhow, in the back of SW’s in-flight magazine, they had the best layout of allowed in-flight electronics of any airline. Whereas the South Africa Airlines rules about no in-flight smartphones was buried halfway into a paragraph full of rules, Southwest has a nice graphic layout that has 3 sections – Always Allowed, Allowed Above 10,000 ft, and Never Allowed – really nice. Nothing really controversial – Smart phones in Airline or Game mode are in the Allowed Above 10,000 ft section. However, I was surprised to see Noise-Cancelling Headphones in the Always Allowed section. Given that these have “on-off” switches, most by-the-book flight attendants see the red light on my Bose cans and tell me to switch them off. But on SW, I guess, they’re good through the entire flight. But still, one more example of the lack of consistency in rules – which I’ll say is one of the main drivers of traveler frustration.
• If you have a question, a story, a comment – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com, you can send me a Twitter message at @mpeacock, or you can post them on the web site at T/C.com.
• Bridge Music — Oh Yeah by Eliyahu Sills

Lost in Distraction

• We’ve talked in a number of episodes about things being left behind by travelers – the study about the number of laptops left behind in airports, people walking away from TSA checkpoints without their shoes, the overflowing box of power adaptors that just about every hotel can pull out when you ask to borrow one.
• A couple of weeks ago, when unpacking from my last New York trip, I discovered that I’d left a pair of olive slacks in my hotel room. It was one of those “head smacking” moments – how could I be so stupid?
• Sometimes I feel like I’m leaving a little trail of belongings behind me as I travel.
• Most are small – pens, books, magazines, enough toiletries to make up a couple of complete kits.
• But some are big – the olive slacks, my original pair of Bose headphones, an entire suitcase in the trunk of a cab.
• OK, I’m not sweating the books or the tooth brush, but, come on – an entire suitcase? Other than creeping senility, what’s my problem?
• At least for me, it’s answering my cell phone. Every time I’ve forgotten something big, it’s been because of a phone call.
• The Bose headphones? My flight had landed in SFO, I was standing up, pulling my suitcase out of the overhead and the phone rings. Of course I answer it, and now I’m juggling my phone, my jacket, my suitcase, my briefcase while trying to slide out into the aisle. Distracted, I completely forget about the headphones in the seatback pocket. I don’t remember them until the next day when they’re long gone, a birthday present for the son or daughter of one of the cleaning crew.
• My olive slacks? One of those days when I just couldn’t get out of my hotel room because of serial phone calls. The phone rings, I answer it, 15-minute conversation, I hang up, re-start my packing, only to have the phone ring again. Another 15-minute conversation, then another call comes in on call waiting. I look at my watch – damn, I gotta get out of this hotel room if I’m going to make my flight home. I didn’t do my usual room scan and walked out light one of my favorite pair of pants.
• When I’m not distracted, I’m usually pretty methodical about leaving hotels or planes. I think my wife thinks that my hotel routine is border-line obsessive-compulsive. I empty the bathroom out, pack up my toiletries, then go back in, check around, turn off the light and close the door. Then, over to the bed, I throw all the pillows on the floor (which, sometimes is 8 or 9 pillows), snap the bedspread to send any hidden socks flying.
• Then, clear all the flat surfaces – it either goes with me or, like the room service menu, goes into a drawer. This is how I didn’t leave behind my iPhone charger this past week. I was clearing off the desk, which ends up being a tangle of hotel modem wires, lamp cords, promotional material, and my own tangle of electronics. I thought I had everything packed, but was making one more scan – cleaning off the flat surfaces so I could give the room one last scan. And there, as I was clearing off the desk, I found I had forgotten to pack my iPhone charger. I had missed seeing it in the midst of the Ethernet cord coming out of the hotel modem.
• Coming off a plane, I tick through a mental inventory, even patting myself down to make sure I have my wallet and iPhone. I look, but don’t put my hands into the seat back pocket – it can be ugly in there.
• But all this takes some concentration – avoid getting lost in distraction.
• I was thinking about this the other day when one of those iPhone commercials came on. There’s an app for this; there’s an app for that. I thought “if there’s an app for everything, there’s gotta be one to keep from getting distracted.” Then I realized there is one – kinda – and it’s built right in. It’s the Off button.
• Bridge Music — Is That Called Love by Liquid Zen

A Movie About Us

• <1st audio clip from trailer>
• I love that line – “I fly 350,000 miles a year; it’s 250,000 miles to the moon.” From the latest trailer for “Up in the Air”, a movie with George Clooney starring as a consultant who fires people. He’s good at his job, which keeps him on the road over 300 days a year. He lives – thrives — in “Airworld”, the travel bubble we’ve talked about on prior episodes where frequent travelers seem to float over the places they visit, insulated by airline clubs and hotel concierge lounges and special lines that whoosh the statused elite along to their next destination.
• I’ll post a link to the movie’s web site. It’s just starting the fall film festival cycle, building word-of-mouth for its release during the Christmas season.
• The trailer has some good lines, like this advice on security line strategy that Clooney’s seasoned traveler gives to a newly-minted Ivy League grad
• <2nd audio clip from trailer>
• Going through both trailers on the movie’s website, you can see the premise is a bit deeper. The George Clooney character is using his frequent flying lifestyle to avoid relationships – nothing too heavy
• <3rd audio clip from trailer>
• While fictional, there’s more than a bit of truth to this. I’ve know a number of guys – and not the gender-neutral Midwest “guys”; they’re all men – over my career who used the need to leave Sunday night for LA or to stay over the weekend in Europe as ways to avoid problems at home – or, once divorced – which all of these guys eventually were – used the same excuses to avoid the barren new apartments.
• Oftentimes when talking to new consultants, giving them some thoughts, some advice about the traveling lifestyle that is part and parcel of consulting, I talk less about who to avoid in the security lines and more about the need to manage their personal lives with at least the same amount of effort as they do their frequent flyer statuses. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m always surprised by the number of guys who don’t.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #78
• I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
• The bridge music is from Magnatune, the we are not evil label . Making Circles by the Seldon Plan, Oh Yeah by Eliyahu Sills, and Is That Called Love by Liquid Zen. You can find these and more at magnatunes.com.
• If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
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• Direct link to the show