Later this summer we will be heading on our annual summer road trip, or what I like to call “adding pins to the map.” For our tenth anniversary, Kelly got me a framed map of the United States that came with a tin of pins. The title at the bottom of the map is “The…
I have taken three long train rides in my life. I define “long” as being “overnight.” The first long train ride was from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. The second was from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. The third, many years later, was from Oxnard, California to Seattle, Washington. None of these train…
Reading Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonian Express has me sitting at my desk at lunch with my Oxford Atlas of the World open so that I can follow along on his travels south. (The book is about the train trip he took from Boston to Patagonia.) Switching between book and maps, I found myself drawn…
I have an email folder called “Upcoming Travel”. It is one of the few email folders I actually have. Most of my messages just go into an archive folder and I rely on searches to find what I am looking for. But the “Upcoming Travel” folder is separate because that’s where travel plans, confirmation messages,…
I spent the weekend traveling the world, an event I had been training for my entire life. That training was inspired by–although I didn’t know it at the time–a talk with my mom when I was 5 or 6 years old, about the value of books. “Books can take you anywhere,” I remember her telling…
On the checklist hotel housekeeping uses when servicing a room, one thing seems lacking. It is a small thing, something that would take almost no time (a second or two at the most). But in my experience, it is almost never done: Check the alarm clock, and if it is on, turn it off. Usually,…
I sometimes wonder what the founding mothers and fathers of our country might think of our modern world. It seems that some (Franklin and Jefferson) would revel in it. Others might be skeptical. Consider that a flight from Philadelphia to Boston takes only 90 minutes, a journey that took John Adams the better part of…
We departed our resort at Walt Disney World yesterday morning at 8:15 am and arrived home just before 11 pm, 860 miles of driving. We have driven too and from Florida more than a dozen times, but this is the first time we attempted to drive all the way home in a single day. The…
There is almost no experience I dread more these days than flying from one city to another. It isn’t out of a fear of flying. It is out of a deep sadness for the loss of what used to be a fun and exciting way to travel. Air travel has found its lowest common denominator…
I’m back home after a thankfully short trip to L.A. During the course of which, I made a few general observations on air travel which I thought I would share with you now: I still think LAX is one of the worst airports I’ve ever been too. My experience was not particularly good or bad…
Once a year, in my day job, my team gathers in our Santa Monica, CA office for an annual planning retreat. I look forward to it with mixed emotions. One the one hand, I get to see people I don’t normally see (I’m the only one on my team who works in our Arlington, VA…
Around 7 pm, we headed over to Sarah’s. Â Originally, we were expecting 5 of us plus Oliver, the dog, to be going up to New Jersey, but Michael’s girlfriend was sick and didn’t end up coming. Â So as soon as we got to Sarah’s, we piled into her car and got on the road. It…