Monday, February 17, 2014

Solace

So, after all the posts I've done about vacations and traveling around, plus 20 years in the Army, it may seem odd for me to say that I travel poorly. That is, I don't particularly enjoy it, and often find it tedious at best.

That goes double when I'm traveling without Mrs. Drang. I'm hardly the first to note that commercial air travel is no fun these days; for me, security is the least of the annoyances. (Although delivering myself into the hands of government bureaucrats is never pleasant.) Since deregulation, air travel has gotten so cheap that the airlines have to make the seats narrower and closer together, cut out services, charge for things that ought to be free...

So the Salt Mines have sent me off for two weeks of training, to teach me how to do the job I've been doing for a dozen years, and, at least in some aspects, for going on 30 years. This time it's to the parent corporation's training facility, which is close to several famous vacation destinations.

I, however, have next to zero interest on going and seeing and doing without my Bearcat.

I'm so boring. Not really much of a bourbon man, either...
I do like their wheat whiskey and their port cask-finished whiskey, though.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bummin' on the mandatory fun travel and idiotic unneeded training. As a trained professional corporate trainer, let me say that most corporate training is a total waste, usually assigned by management as a solution for something that isn't solved by training. (The simplistic idea that people don't do things only because they don't know how, vs. the more common reasons: no incentive, power/control, negative rewards, etc.)

Oh look I got distracted by my hobby horse. Anyway, sympathies and let me say re: air travel that I sympathize re: accommodations -- but I'm guilty along with so many others of shopping on the basis of airfare, not seat pitch or meals or pleasant attendants or any of the other once-nice things about air travel… we get what we shop for and in most cases that is 'cheap as possible.'

-Erik from Seattle

Anonymous said...

Wow, I'm a ray of sunshine. - E from S.

Drang said...

I'll probably splurge on "Economy Plus" or "Comfort" or whatever they're calling it on Salt Mine's Preferred Air Carrier. Got an exit row seat on the long leg here, but a middle seat -- and the other two seats were taken by guys bigger than me. (And I'm 6'1", 240 pounds.) No exit row on the shot leg -- and the other seat was taken by an even bigger guy. :-(

AuricTech said...

(Although delivering myself into the hands of government bureaucrats is never pleasant.)

I see what you did there....