From our recent trip to San Francisco…light streaming through through one of the uprights on the Golden Gate Bridge.
San Francisco, CA, USA
The annual world Open Space on Open Space is upon us, and I am here with the whole family in San Francisco in anticipation of two and half days of meeting with friends old and new. Tonight Harrison Owen was here making a brief appearance to launch the 3rd Edition of the Open Space Technology User’s Guide, which has been updated with several stories and tweaks to the process that the community has evolved since the last edition, published in the 1990s. It was good to see Harrison again, although ever so briefly, as he was off to perfrom the wedding ceremony for his daughter this coming weekend, so he won’t be with us.
A nice evening reception though down at Fort Mason on the waterfront. Several bloggers are here this year, so I expect to see stuff posted from Viv McWaters, Jeff Aitken, Christy Lee Engle, Doug Germann and Kaliya Hamlin among others. Hopefully we’ll have some connectivity in the conference site and I’ll be able to post the odd reflection or two.
In the meantime, we’ve been here for a few days already, visiting Alcatraz, downtown and around the waterfront. I have some photos up at the flickr site, won’t be labeled for a while though.
Just coming to the end of a ten day trek in New York City, working with some great folks, seeing the sights, taking in a few plays and generally enjoying time with fmaily and friends.
Back soon.
Today I was scheduled to make a short flight from Vancouver to Nanaimo. It is early spring here on the southwest Pacific coast of Canada, which means blossoming trees, fresh spring flowers and, to everyone’s surprise, a blizzard in Nanaimo, which meant my flight was cancelled. So I high tailed it out to Horseshoe Bay and jumped n the new Coastal Rennaissance ferry and headed to Vancouver Island by slow boat. Revelling in my new found free time, and fresh from adding up the contents of my suitcase, I decided to crunch the numbers and see what my travel schedule has really been like. Here it is:
- Number of days from January 1 to March 31: 91
- Number of those nights I spent in my own bed: 28
- Days in which I did nothing at all related to work: 25
- Number of those days that were in Maui starting New Year’s Day:10
- Number of flight segments: 25
- Number of airlines travelled: 4
- Number of train rides from Vancouver to Seattle: 3
- Number of cars rented: 0
- Number of flights cancelled for snow: 3
- Days of work missed as a result: 1
- Temperature with windchill in Celsius that Regina experienced on that day: -56
- Number of flights taken from Vancouver to Toronto: 2
- Percentage of those flights on which the on board computer needed rebooting before we could leave: 100%
- Number of US Border crossings: 6
- Number of US Customs and Border Protection officers encountered: 10
- Number who wished me well, thanked me, welcomed me or said nice things: 2
- Number who admitted me to the United States without a single word exchanged between us: 1
- Number of clients: 14
- Trips in which I worked with three or more clients in person without going home: 3
- Trips during which my family came with me: 3
- Meals which I have cooked for my family: 3
- Weeks in a row I am taking off from work between June and September: 10
- Consecutive days I get to spend in my own bed starting Sunday: 15
That last stat: luxury.
The funnest moment, by a long way, was surprising my father on his 70th birthday. We flew to Ontario, drove with my mother through a raging blizzard for three hours, arrived at my parent’s house as my dad was going to sleep, and crept up the stairs singing “Happy Birthday.” The look on his face was beautiful, have asleep and full of love and delight. Nothing compares.
Just a post for posterity’s sake, blogged from Vancouver. I haven’t quite made it home yet.
This has been the busiest two months in the history of my consultancy practice, travel wise. For the last month, I have been living out of a suitcase, with my schedule consisting of a week on the road and one or two days at home for four weeks in a row. My home has been an Eagle Creek Switchback Max 25 (which is an incredibly excellent bag, if I do say so myself), and it’s full of everything I need for my travelling facilitation and harvesting roadshow, including:
- Two pairs of “good” pants and a pair of jeans.
- Two “good” shirts and two t-shirts.
- Swim trunks/shorts, taekwondo pants and taekwondo shoes.
- Five pairs of socks
- Four 75g Higgins Brothers juggling balls
- A modified Generation tin whistle in D
- A box of Charters markers and some assorted Mr. Sketch pens
- 3 sets of Staetdler pens: 8 triplus fineliners, 20 triplus fineliners and 20 triplus colour
- Two Moleskines – a new one and an old one
- A copy of Stephen Karcher’s I Ching and my current read, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (which I bought…)
- A deck of playing cards
- My laptop, cellphone, Canon Powershot A720, Olympus DS-2 voice recorder, Sansa 2GB mp3 player and an assortment of cables, connectors and a webcam.
- A plastic Nalgene water bottle (soon to be replaced by metal)
- A steel travel mug from Bad Ass Coffee in Maui.
- A tiny single steel travel espresso cup that always elicits “ahhhhhh…cuuuuute” comments from Asian baristas at airport espresso bars (it’s a phenomenon…)
- Glasses, toiletries, tea bags, wallet, passport, a file folder with border documentation and some ball point pens.
The whole thing is pretty manageable, and contains everything I need to work, exercise, play and amuse myself on long flights. It all goes on my back when I am walking between the ferry and my home, which is a mile through forest and along rural roads, and it all rolls nicely along airport and hotel floors. I have literally been living out of this bag for a month, at home and on the road, (with the exception of the three days the bag was in Korea) only changing around the clothes when I get home, switching dirty for clean. All told, a tidy little set up, and a nice reminder of how little I actually need to work and live with.