(no subject)
I did the math. (I was waiting at a travel agency and there just wasn't that much else to do.) While it feels like I've been on the road continuously from February through July, it's not nearly that bad. It turns out to be only 95 of 181 days, or 52.5% of the time... :-) With the exception of April, when I was home almost the entire month, I've been outside 413 for the majority of every other month.
Thus far this year:
India, San Francisco, Madrid, Austin, Las Cruces, Atlanta, Tokyo, Amman, Dublin, Minneapolis, Sicily, Miami, Jo'burg, Cape Town, London, and Amman again. Oh, with Boston, NYC and Amsterdam countless times.
I'm still shy of Platinum status (75,000 miles from February to February) on Northwest, despite the fact that I've actually flown well over 100,000 miles. That's because I paid for the trips to Japan and South Africa with air miles. Seattle next month should put me over the top.
All of which goes to explain my actions in the last 36 hours or so. I arrived in Amman at 2am on Wednesday morning. Slept 5 hours, got up for a conference that began at 8:30. Gave a talk at 10:30, hung out with Jordanian geeks until 4pm, did a podcast with a Jordanian blogger. Slept an hour completely by accident: sat down on the bed to take off my shoes and woke up with the shoes still on when the phone rang an hour later. An American geek - who I met at the conference and didn't much like... Dinner together? Hell no. A drink, though. So we chat for an hour or so and I post the podcast, send some mail.
It's now 8pm in one of the world's great small cities. I've got nothing on the calendar until 1pm the next day. Do I go out for dinner in one of the excellent restaurants? Take a cab to the new shopping mall? Work out in the lavish hotel gym?
I walk two blocks down the street to the world's best shawerma stand, get three beef shawerma and a diet soda for $3, scarf them down in my room, watch 10 minutes of CNN, and sleep 13 hours. Get up, check mail, check in for the flight tomorrow, sleep another hour. I'm sensing a trend here...
It's just hard to get excited about exploring a city when you're here for the sixth time. There's tons I'd like to do in Jordan - see Jerash, some of the other Roman ruins. But I don't have time to take a car out of town, and it's 35C here, which makes walking around much less appealing. My traveller instincts almost demand that I go to the heart of the old town and do some shopping. But I can't really convince myself of a need for more Jordanian trinkets.
I'll be a better traveller today - lunch with an old friend, coffee with a USAIDer, "dinner" (just drinks, I think) with a gang of Jordanian bloggers. The gym, unfortunately, might get missed on this particular trip...
Thus far this year:
India, San Francisco, Madrid, Austin, Las Cruces, Atlanta, Tokyo, Amman, Dublin, Minneapolis, Sicily, Miami, Jo'burg, Cape Town, London, and Amman again. Oh, with Boston, NYC and Amsterdam countless times.
I'm still shy of Platinum status (75,000 miles from February to February) on Northwest, despite the fact that I've actually flown well over 100,000 miles. That's because I paid for the trips to Japan and South Africa with air miles. Seattle next month should put me over the top.
All of which goes to explain my actions in the last 36 hours or so. I arrived in Amman at 2am on Wednesday morning. Slept 5 hours, got up for a conference that began at 8:30. Gave a talk at 10:30, hung out with Jordanian geeks until 4pm, did a podcast with a Jordanian blogger. Slept an hour completely by accident: sat down on the bed to take off my shoes and woke up with the shoes still on when the phone rang an hour later. An American geek - who I met at the conference and didn't much like... Dinner together? Hell no. A drink, though. So we chat for an hour or so and I post the podcast, send some mail.
It's now 8pm in one of the world's great small cities. I've got nothing on the calendar until 1pm the next day. Do I go out for dinner in one of the excellent restaurants? Take a cab to the new shopping mall? Work out in the lavish hotel gym?
I walk two blocks down the street to the world's best shawerma stand, get three beef shawerma and a diet soda for $3, scarf them down in my room, watch 10 minutes of CNN, and sleep 13 hours. Get up, check mail, check in for the flight tomorrow, sleep another hour. I'm sensing a trend here...
It's just hard to get excited about exploring a city when you're here for the sixth time. There's tons I'd like to do in Jordan - see Jerash, some of the other Roman ruins. But I don't have time to take a car out of town, and it's 35C here, which makes walking around much less appealing. My traveller instincts almost demand that I go to the heart of the old town and do some shopping. But I can't really convince myself of a need for more Jordanian trinkets.
I'll be a better traveller today - lunch with an old friend, coffee with a USAIDer, "dinner" (just drinks, I think) with a gang of Jordanian bloggers. The gym, unfortunately, might get missed on this particular trip...