The Amalgamation of Business Travel & Pleasure
I’ve done a lot of business travel over the last twenty years. My first job out of college had me in twenty-five states before I finished my second year. I was young, didn’t know how to say no to management, and had a wanderlust that I wasn’t in tune with.
Early on, I spent four weeks with an old timer in the sales department who lived in Pennsylvania Amish Country. We spent every day traveling around his territory in his company issued Crown Victoria. He chain smoked Benson & Hedges and took long lunches. When he wasn’t telling jokes or humming along to oldies, he was unknowingly teaching me the art of enjoying life on the road.
Whereas other salesmen I traveled with were paranoid about appearances and worried about losing their jobs, this guy stopped and smelled the roses. I guess at his age, he’d earned the right to.
He had an account near the town of Hershey, so we made an impromptu visit to the chocolate factory, took the dime store tour, and got our two candy bars upon departure. Work would still be there when we were done.
As I was wrapping up my time with him, he casually said, “Working on the road doesn’t have to be a chore. You get to see America, so make sure you see it.” Sound advice.
Years later, I’d hear colleagues brag about working so much while traveling that they never saw the cities they were in. It never made a damn bit of sense to me. Business travel and pleasure are not mutually exclusive.
Here’s a short list of places I’ve visited while traveling as a corporate guy:
Chicago - Architecture Boat Tour, Cubs game, The Art Institute
Houston - Rothko Chapel (had to skip a post-conference cocktail reception)
San Francisco - Palace of Fine Arts, City Lights Bookstore, Vesuvio Cafe, UC Berkeley
New Orleans - French Quarter, Garden District
New York - The Met, MOMA, Guggenheim, McSorley's Old Ale House, NYU, Columbia
Dallas - I went bungee jumping before a terribly boring conference. HR found out and had a talk with me. To this day, I’m the only guy HR wrote up for bungee jumping.
D.C. - Every Monument, Georgetown, Ford’s Theater, Kennedy Center
San Antonio - Riverwalk, The Alamo
Philadelphia - Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Elfreth's Alley, Benjamin Franklin’s grave, Penn
College campuses have been, and always will be, one of my favorite places to visit. No matter where the company sends you, chances are a college is nearby. Uncle Ron did this on business travel too before he retired; it must be in the blood. In the early days of my career, I was working near Burlington, so I ventured off the beaten corporate path and visited Church Street Marketplace, Lake Champlain, and the University of Vermont. After a stroll on the waterfront, I opened my gas station map and found a route to Dartmouth College in Hanover.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Crews were rowing on the Connecticut River as I crossed over Ledyard Bridge; orange leaves were falling, and a crisp autumn breeze was meandering through campus. I instantly fell in love with Dartmouth. You can’t get any more New England than that. I’m sure I was supposed to be working, but a piece of America was there, and I needed to see it.
Last week I flew to Tampa for a three-hour meeting. I woke up early, hopped on a plane at Hartsfield International, and eventually landed in Florida after several delays. When the meeting was over, I rushed down the Causeway to Clearwater to watch the sun set on the beach. I only had thirty minutes because I had to catch a flight back to Atlanta, but I made the most of it.
Clearwater Beach, Florida. Photograph by Bradley A. Evans.
