G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S Business Travel

False.

Growing up in Cleveland, I thought business travel was the height of sophisticated adulthood. My father brought me (and sibling) books and Fannie May treats from his work trips to Chicago. My aunt went further afield to Hong Kong and California, bringing back jade souvenirs and boxes of dates. It was like a exotic caravan stopped at my house whenever business occurred. I couldn't wait to get in on work-related vacations when I was an adult.

20 years later...

Turns out traveling for work is nothing like a vacation. Nothing! True, business trips as a senior designer for a publisher aren't going to be as swank as trips for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. However, I just returned from a client visit to Grand Rapids and with that fresh in my mind... some observations of business travel reality:

Uggg. Enough already.

1) You're never going to meet sexy, witty people at your hotel. Forget what you saw in Up in the Air. The closest you're getting to sexual tension is being stuck on the fitness center treadmill between a TV playing Basic Instinct (soft core porn) and a mildly creepy older man watching slack-jawed. It is very difficult to catch up on podcasts with Michael Douglas groaning at top volume.

2) Location doesn't matter. You're in beautiful Michigan on a summer day? Well, I hope you enjoy the gray, windowless meeting room that looks the same as the one at your own office. Whoa, you're going to Orlando for two days in October?! Tropical! Oh wait, the conference is at the airport hotel? The breeze off the tarmac sure is nice this time of year. Reality: you've traveled for a purpose and that purpose is to impress your client and go straight home, not to sight-see. Those cool souvenirs I got as a kid undoubtedly came from airport gift shops. Not that they are any less appreciated, just that the notion of a businessperson leisurely strolling through hip local boutiques suddenly seems improbable.

3) You will feel like a child, but shake it off. This is a pitfall of my own making. I have not owned a proper suit since I was a senior in high school. Despite this, I have landed several jobs and am not a slob. I think "arty folk" get a bit of a pass on business dress. However, even if that pass is accepted, standing amid a group of suit-wearers in classy, but non-suit attire, will make you feel like an infant. Can I just solve this problem by buying a suit? Yes. But A) I hate suits B) They are expensive and C) I'd rarely wear it. So I suck it up in my business casual black pants and present my heart out anyhow.

4) If you can, drive there. I guess if you hate driving, this is not an option. Plus, anything over five hours is probably impractical in a car. But, life is a highway, man, and I'd rather have the wind in my hair for a short trip. The TSA frowns on travelers tunelessly belting out "Tiny Dancer" in security lines. No such law in the Interstate system. Thank God.

Could be worse.

5) Be careful what you pack. There is a chance that valued co-workers will see your belongings at some point, so pack conservatively. On my recent trip, co-worker #1 went to the car to fetch a computer cord from co-worker #2's suitcase. Co-worker #1 returned with my hot pink, mini hair iron, asking "Is this it?" Wrong bag! But a good reminder that people you respect are in positions to literally see your dirty laundry. (PS- the mini flatiron might be the best accidental TJMaxx find ever. Great for travel!)

I could probably keep this list going for quite some time, but five seems like a nice round number. Readers, what joys have you discovered in your own business travel lives?

Snow Day Nostalgia

Let's go, Swift!

It's an officially sanctioned snow day at the Peters household! I honestly don't remember the last time I got a nature-related hall pass from life, but probably not in this century. So, woooooohoo! And I've got to say that this one is way legit. I was blown to the ground twice on my walk home last night, despite the ballast of emergency bottles of Riesling. Mother Nature was getting very handsy and it was thrilling.

However, feeling the windows of my cocoon rattle and watching the snow howl by horizontally at 100mph, I'm doubting that this day off is going to be as rad as those of my youth...

Unnecessary List: D.C. Edition

Here's mine. 

City Life Shout Out of the Year: Here’s a shout out to taxicabs: thanks for saving me a lot of money this year. Whether you maliciously ignored me, refused to accept a debit card, or just weren’t around when I needed you, you did what it took to protect my pocketbook and get me some much-needed exercise.

A Year in Review: My Own Unnecessary List.

The blogosphere is simply bloated with "Top 10 Things!" or "Arbitrary Best of That" articles this time of year. This could be because humans are naturally attracted to lists (just me?). A more likely scenario is that post-Thanksgiving, bloggers start a slow, cookie-enhanced descent to laziness. Lists are way easier than writing something hard, like, with themes and metaphors.

The blogger description is highly questionable, but I am feeling lazy and have consumed an ungodly amount of bakery. Plus I promised myself I'd squeeze one last post into 2010. Let's hit it!

The Chicago Easy Button

If you press the red button, you will get your
heat, but a person will die
somewhere in the world.

Today is November 3rd, which means one crucial thing has changed in Chicago since October. New political leadership, you guessed? True, but like that makes a difference! Nope. Far more importantly, it is Day Three of the El platform space heaters being turned back on!

I speak for myself, but I project that every Chicagoan must have a love/hate relationship with the Easy Button. I love that I can stand under the toasty lamps with my pigeon colony friends and have a buffer from the frigid wind. Especially valuable given that my office El stop is perhaps THE COLDEST PLACE IN THE WORLD. That's saying a lot considering I spent four years in Siberacuse.

But I hate that I have to use it at all. Its reemergence each fall means that deepest winter is around the corner and pretty soon I will be pushing that button like a cocaine-addicted mouse in a lab experiment.

The first rule of Easy Button (and the only one) is that if you are standing nearest the button, your sole role in life while on that platform is to reset the heater the split second the timer kicks off. Preferably a second before it turns off. Count in your head if you have to. Yesterday, I stumbled into the button keeper job and let a whole two seconds pass after the lamps turned off before several people's heads whipped around at me, as if to say, "W.T.F.? Do your JOB, woman!" My reflexes will improve. By February I will be an Easy Button Ninja.

On Bikes, Part 1: Five Reasons Why Biking is City Dangerous

My trusty steed. 

Last week I ran out of money on my metro card, and decided that the rest of the month would be Bike To Work Month. I’m on my third day of biking and it’s already time for a list of things that make biking annoying and potentially dangerous. 

1. Bikers who pick and choose which traffic laws to follow. I know. I know you can’t be bothered with The Man’s game of red-light, green-light and you eschew play-by-the-rules cogs like me that live within in the double yellows. I know that when you speed past me with a smirk as I’m sitting at a red light sucking in exhaust, you are thinking, “This goddamn tool, waiting for the robots to let him live his life.” And when you cross onto the sidewalk to avoid waiting at a red and then don’t signal as you rejoin traffic, I know you are proud of your little trick. I want you to know that you sicken me.

First time riding metro? Our doors aren't like other doors.

Bear traps?

I feel a little bad now. The Washington metro's escalators were this blog's introductory City Danger, but it appears I may have been a bit insensitive in giving WMATA a hard time about the Bethesda escalator outage. According to the best blog in DC, the problem is that there are, like, so many escalators down there. The post has a fascinating map of the metro's escalators, and some interesting figures on how much it takes to maintain them. Spoiler Alert! Due to math, it's $30 million dollars per year. 

Stranger Danger

Take the candy!

After years of nearly zero brushes with unlawfulness in big cities, I recently fell victim to my first ever mugging. Being robbed in broad daylight ranks relatively high on the list of city dangers, but for me it lead to a far scarier threat ... Mary Kay saleswomen.

At first glance that cosmetics company would have no relationship to a purse-snatching. However, with my shoulder bag went a stash of newly purchased goods from "Facial Home Depot"*, Ulta Beauty. Cruel fate! It was a deep blow to my shallow side. Due to budget constraints, I settled on cheap drug store replacements but the feeling of loss lingered. (It did amuse me to imagine the thug's dismay when he realized all my assets were tied up in Bare Minerals. Or maybe "Golden Gate" was his shade too?)

"According to WMATA, this escalator is operational."

Stay to the right, guys.

The metro in DC is great - it's often orderly, on time, and clean-ish. (Of course, when something goes wrong, i.e. some anxious tourist or exhausted bureaucrat prevents the door from closing, the place makes the capsized Poseidon look like a poorly-done carnival ride.) One thing that's not great about Metro, though, is the escalators - they are so frequently incapacitated that, yes, they constitute a City Danger.

The escalator at the station near my office has been "closed for modernization" for months (I am expecting cup holders, charger outlets for my iPod, and leather) which annoyingly requires that traffic go both ways up the functioning escalator.