Pay particular attention to step 23

Driving from New York to Dublin, courtesy Google Maps

Whereabouts

If any of you will be at ETech next week, please let me know.

Off to TED

If any readers of this blog will be at the conference and are interested in getting together, please contact me via the usual methods.

"But there's no robe"

What's it like to be me when I'm travelling for work, you want to know? OK. Here's the full, not-even-slightly-redacted text of an email I sent to two friends (one of whom had gotten me the gig) from one trip.


Plane: three hours late

Landing in Chicago: Aborted when we were only a couple hundred feet in the air because there was another plane at the end of the runway. We got the aerial version of whiplash.

Hotel: On the outskirts of fucking nowhere, 50 minutes out of Chicago. It's like they claimed an event was in Boston, but it was really in Hopkinton. No Internet access (I'm stealing/borrowing it from the office park the hotel is in). In the closet there's a tag on a hangar that says the robe is $95, but there's no robe. In the bathroom, no shampoo or conditioner, but four bottles of a mouthwash called "Whisper Mint."

Best philanthropic opportunity ever

 Many, many years ago, when my wife worked in prospect research along with some Major Gift Officers, I used to joke that I wanted to be a Minor Gift Officer, specializing in very small gifts. Instead of bringing potential donors to expensive restaurants, I'd bring them to Friendly's. I once amused myself (if not the other people at the dinner table) by suggesting that, instead of getting donors who would put their names on the front of buildings, I would get donors who would give enough money to sponsor an exit sign. At MASS MoCA this weekend, I saw that someone got there before me.

What I learned this weekend

If you're going away with your family for the weekend and you promise your older daughter that you'll swim with her in the hotel's heated outside pool even if it's in the mountains and barely 20 degrees outside (that's Fahrenheit, folks), you still have to do it. Now I know what "brisk" means.

Worst airline passenger of the week

In the months to come, I'll be on this route regularly. I hope I don't sit next to her.