I’m heading to New Jersey again tomorrow to see a client. While it’s a bummer to have to travel for work, going to the East Coast for me is easy. I can schedule my trip so I’m there and back in one day. I’m not saying it’s fun to get up at 4:30 a.m. (it reminds me of the hellish newborn days), but there are benefits to a business day trip for me:
- I don’t have to worry about staying in a grungy hotel.
- My coworkers feel bad for me so I can usually get away with leaving early from work the day before.
- My husband feels bad for me so he will usually get up with the baby the next morning. Unless he has an early morning meeting and then I’m stuck with baby duty. I said *usually*.
- I can drink Starbucks (and expense it) until the caffeine gods go crazy.
- A 6:30 a.m. flight is early enough for me to justify sleeping on the plane on the way out. Read: my brain doesn’t function before
8 a.m.9 a.m. Central time. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with me sleeping on the way home either. - I can wear flat-heeled shoes. No one expects me to shuffle around the airport and in and out of cars for 12 hours in high heels. Another reason I love flats.
- I pretty much guarantee that I won’t go more than 24 hours without seeing my kid. But then again, I have to fly into O’Hare, where no flight is guaranteed.
So if given a choice, my vote is for a business day trip. You?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m the opposite. Day trips exhaust me. I don’t travel a lot for work, but when I do, I want to stay overnight in a nice, quiet hotel room with a big bed and clean sheets. It’s a treat to wake up alone in a nice quiet hotel room with a big bed (that I don’t have to make)!
The New York Times ran a great piece a few months ago on how working moms relish a travel break:
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/business/01travel.html
On an almost completely unrelated note, I thought you might enjoy this little story I was reminded of while reading the title of your post. A co-worker of mine has the last name of “Day.” His mom, a huge Beatles fan, thought it would be cute to get a vanity plate for her car that said “Day Tripper” on it since her last name was Day. The plate read “DATRPR.” She tooled around in her car for a few weeks with her cool new plate until one day my co-worker’s friend was at the house and said to him, “Why does your mom (a woman in her 60′s) have a license plate that says “date raper?”
If I am going by myself, day trip. If I am going with a fun co-worker, over night trips are best. I don’t know about you but I enjoy the downtime in the evenings and having a co-worker with you allows you to have some adult time over a cocktail or two.