June 3, 2006
I was thinking about Eric Mayer's post about summer vacation, and since I'm on a trip in Baltimore, I was contemplating my current travel mindset, wondering if this was healthy or unhealthy.

Growing up, my father's idea of a great vacation involved driving and driving and driving. 12 to 15 hours a day, I've seen most of the country from the backseat of a car going 60 miles per hour on the expressway. I hate that.

Increasingly, as I get older, for whatever reason, my travels focus on smaller and smaller locations. Disney World, where we don't leave any of the parks, even though we've talked about going to Orlando to eat at Margaritaville or Emeril's. My sister's condo on Higgins Lake. Mackinaw Island, where we stay in St. Ignace, take the ferry to the island, spend the day, wander around St. Ignace a bit, maybe go to one of the national lakeshores on Lake Michigan to swim, and then travel down the coast to Traverse City where we cover the usual tourist things in the area--the Sand Dunes, the marina, etc.

I've pretty much stuck to the Inner Harbor area here in Baltimore, when I'm not otherwise in my room working or at scientific or business meetings. I didn't rent a car, and I took the water taxi over to Fell's Point, but didn't bother taking the switch-off to Fort McHenry. I just stayed on the boat and came on back.

Maybe I'm not feeling adventuresome, or, perhaps, I'm just finding that when I'm working out of a hotel, I work twice as hard to get half as much done and what little rec time involes restaurants or nearby tourist things. I ran into a friend of mine here, and I asked about her husband and she commented that he was taking the train to Washington DC. Well, yes, it's not that far, but there seemed like a lot to do right here, too.

For me maybe it's time and energy. I feel like I have to rethink next year's conference, because it's very hard to get effective, efficient work done, but I had deadlines, so what was I going to do? Turning it into a "real" vacation might be a good idea, or just coming for a shorter period of time so I can get back to home and work in a speedier fashion might be the best idea.

But that's planning too far ahead. I'm off to lunch.

Best,
Mark Terry