{"id":1082,"date":"2008-01-08T15:45:29","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T19:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/08\/here-we-go-again\/"},"modified":"2008-01-08T15:45:29","modified_gmt":"2008-01-08T19:45:29","slug":"here-we-go-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/08\/here-we-go-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Here We Go Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yup. It&#8217;s around the world <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/tag\/melbourne\/\">again<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Same route, same distance, slightly longer stay this time.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2007\/02\/itinerary.jpg\" title=\"More than enough miles\" rel=\"lightbox\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2007\/02\/_itinerary.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"223\" alt=\"More than enough miles\" title=\"More than enough miles\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I checked it out this time, the straight-line distances between the airports are (I put the imperial numbers in for the Yanks, in the parentheses):<\/p>\n<p><strong>Outbound<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Halifax &#8211; London (Heathrow) : 4589km (2852)<\/li>\n<li>London (Heathrow) &#8211; Hong Kong : 9653km (5998)<\/li>\n<li>Hong Kong &#8211; Melbourne: 7410km (4604)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Return<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Melbourne &#8211; Singapore 6041km (3753)<\/li>\n<li>Singapore &#8211; London (Heathrow): 10892km (6768)<\/li>\n<li>London (Heathrow) &#8211; Halifax: 4589km (2852)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Total distance: 43174km<br \/>\nApproximate circumference of the Earth at the equator: 40075km<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>It&#8217;s funny, if you had told 23-year-old me that someday someone else would pay for me to fly business class around the world, to spend a couple of weeks in Australia, and that they would put me up in some ridiculously priced suites while I was there, he would have been so excited that he probably would have been vibrating. He got excited over getting flown to Boston and put up in the <a href=\"http:\/\/doubletree1.hilton.com\/en_US\/dt\/hotel\/BOSOWDT-Doubletree-Guest-Suites-Boston-Waltham-Massachusetts\/index.do?brand_id=DT&#038;brand_directory=\/en\/dt\/&#038;xch=120090576,JQZHTT3M1YYRYCSGBIXM22Q\">Doubletree<\/a>. Actually going to another country, much less another continent, on someone else&#8217;s dime, would blow his mind.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I don&#8217;t want to go. <\/p>\n<p>Partly it&#8217;s just that don&#8217;t want to be away from my family&#8211;spending two working weeks in Melbourne means missing out on three weekends, and two weeks at home. <\/p>\n<p>Partly it&#8217;s that I know what a pain the travel will be, even with the swanky tickets. No swank can change that fact that it&#8217;s 100 hours of travel time in two big chunks, or that there are connection and layovers at multiple points each way. And that my bosses won&#8217;t think twice about my spending that 100 hours (theoretically 2.5 weeks of work, right?) unless I bring it up first.<\/p>\n<p>Partly it&#8217;s because I know what business travel is like&#8211;there won&#8217;t be any chance to look around or take in the city or country, except on the one weekend I&#8217;m there. And I&#8217;ll be pretty exhausted on that weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Partly it&#8217;s because the last time I checked Melbourne was more than 60 degrees (real Celsius degrees) hotter than it is here right now, and that&#8217;s too damn hot.<\/p>\n<p>Partly it&#8217;s because I&#8217;ve done this before, and so there&#8217;s no novelty value. I know exactly how long it&#8217;s going to take to get there. I know that when I get there, instead of some exotic locale, I&#8217;m going to find &#8220;Toronto with L.A. weather&#8221;. Maybe if we had an office in Cairo, or Nairobi, or something.<\/p>\n<p>Partly it&#8217;s because solo travel is just a lot less fun now. There&#8217;s not nearly the potential for disaster or reward that there used to be when I traveled around. On the &#8220;less dangerous&#8221; side, well, I&#8217;m a husband and a dad now&#8211;I can&#8217;t do a whole bunch of the recklessly irresponsible things I used to do on the road, because the consequences wouldn&#8217;t be to just me if something went wrong. And even discounting my responsibilities to others, the consequences of some of that stuff could be more serious to me than to that 23-year-old.<footnote>Although it would still be kind of funny to call my boss and tell him I couldn&#8217;t come to work because I was in jail in another country. I wouldn&#8217;t want to make that call to Trish, though. She didn&#8217;t think it was funny last time.<\/footnote> On the &#8220;less fun&#8221; side, well, a lot of the good stuff from the solo travel days involved meeting women, and again, I&#8217;m a happily married man. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I can still have fun, lots of fun, if I meet the right people, or get into the right circumstances, but it won&#8217;t have the dizzying highs and devastating lows that used to either be around, or lurk in the background.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, I&#8217;d much rather stay home, or else take my family with me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Yup. It&#8217;s around the world again. Same route, same distance, slightly longer stay this time. I checked it out this time, the straight-line distances between the airports are (I put the imperial numbers in for the Yanks, in the parentheses): Outbound Halifax &#8211; London (Heathrow) : 4589km (2852) London (Heathrow) &#8211; Hong Kong : 9653km (5998) Hong Kong &#8211; Melbourne:&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/08\/here-we-go-again\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[187,185,104],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storytime","tag-air-travel","tag-melbourne","tag-the-road","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-hs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}