Coach Roach

Traveling is part of my job. My commitment to uninterrupted employment means I must partake of planes, trains and mostly my automobile on a regular basis.

The bulk of my travel remains within the confines of the state of Illinois. I journey outside of Illinois on occasion by car, visiting Indiana with alarming regularly considering before accepting my current job the only this I had to say about the Hoosier state was it smelled an awful lot like formaldehyde.

Though I have done one-day trips to Wisconsin and Missouri alike, I prefer to consider any mileage in excess of 220 one-way as over-nights.

Here’s my math – 220 miles takes about 4 hours.
4 times 2 equals 8.
Technically, I should work 8 hours a day.
Each visit I make takes about an hour, and I rarely travel over 440 miles to see only one person.
You add in 2 or 3 visits, and the time it takes to get between visits, and a day of work is pushing 13 hours.
Though it happens more than I think it should, the day after a 13 hour day, I am hardly worth the space I take up in the office.


In addition to not loving winters in Illinois, I am likewise not a fan of Route 57, the road I take back and forth to Chicago and its surroundings.

It’s length, it’s lack of interesting sites, the entire stretch in Ford County where they have evidently cut asphalt out of the budget completely as it rivals any road in in Northeast Washington, DC.

While living and getting educated in our nations Capitol, I once saw a city road crew throw a mattress in a pothole, dump some filler asphalt over it and pound it down with the weight of a crew I am certain only moments earlier had been outside the homeless shelter on 15th and Corcoran. To this day, the car sinkins a little when I drive over it. Barry should have thrown a Tempurpedic in there.

I am on 57 all the time, and I just now know where the dunkin donuts are, where not to stop to piddle (Paxton, this is you)and to always sing out "Rantucky" as I speed past Rantoul. This insult is from a girl who was raised in here, calling her home region Shampoo Banana.

Though most of my travel in and around Illinois, I am thoughtfully released 4 or 5 times a year to places that, though they can be reached by car, it’s not the most prudent use of state dollars.
The DC area, NJ and the greater tri state, and Florida - east coast and gulf.

This particular trip, I headed west. To Los Angeles.
El Lay baby.
Good visits. Fine leads and solid outcomes.

LA has a lot to offer. Blue skies, mountain peaks sprinkled with snow. Beach front without a single skeet-ball game in sight. Minor celebrities sitting across from me while I am talking to a donor about the College's amazing new curriculum and I barely covered my "who the hell is that?" look.

I hope.

Yes, LA has a lot.

You know what LA doesn’t need?

Any more frickin people.

Seven lanes of traffic in each direction and every one of them are full?

I don’t think they actually go to work. I think it’s like the Truman Show, and there are people whose job it is to just congest the freeways.

Maybe I am getting more accustomed to Illinois than I thought?

Could I actually enjoy our sad little two lane roads with views of absolutely nothing except the random driver reading a novel in her lap whilst driving 70 miles per hour? Yes, ma’am, we know the road is rather straight. But, really, reading? An actual book? Maybe next time you swing past the library and pick up John Grisholm on CD?

I probably caused more problems chasing her delinquent ass up 57 and maddeningly calling the police to report her plate number.

Anyway, or this particular trip to LA, I’ll admit it. I was nervous.
Total odgidda. Thank God Prevacid is OTC now, though it takes two, sometimes, three, to really settle my increasing travelers woes.

So fearful was I that I would be late for an appointment as I was trapped in too far a left lane on The 405 (what’s with the The stuff?) or lost in a valley with no signal to Julie, the woman who lives in the windshield now, I was leaving my hotel before 6:30 am each day. Just under 500 miles in 3 days, and I am once again reminded that I don’t really like business travel.

Sure, in my 20’s, I was enchanted by the allure of business travel. I work with lovely people who think I have this glamourous side to my job.

These are the same women who travel outside of Champaign County once a year and it's not uncommon for them to usurp three work days planning an overnight to Memphis. By car.

Yeah, the bloom is off the rose.

I am not meeting handsome innocuous chatty strangers in my middle seat.

Because even if Bradley Cooper was actually in the middle seat next to me, and I was the multi-toothed Julia Roberts, I would still be out of my skin with fury that there was someone in the middle seat to begin with. The only thing that belongs in the middle seat is my discarded copy of Vanity Fair.

Neither is George Clooney in the seat behind me, waiting for his 10 millionth mile.

A basketball player from Naperville currently has his overlong legs – and therefore knees - in my back at this moment and is determined to make me put my seat in its full and upright position. Good luck, kiddo, you’re what, 19 years old? Sit back and enjoy the strength behind my size 24 body pushing back at you.

So, no, I don't love business travel.
Though I do love frequent flier miles and hotel points.
Greed, by definition, is good.

There is only one good reason to love business travel.

The coming home part.

If you could bottle how it feels to come down the escalator and see Jack running towards you, with Lucio standing behind him, holding a diet coke and smiling up at me, we could completely negate the need to depression meds.

It's like seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

I am on a plane now, heading home. The middle seat empty and the man by the window is sleeping soundly enough that he didn’t notice me put down the shade. Mother and daughter in front of me recently escaped from some eastern block nation spitting all over each other and wear more make up between them right this moment than I wore in all of 2009.

Neither one of them actually fit into their clothing but that doesn’t seem to concern them. The A in Hardy is stretched so tightly across the top section of her at least 70 year old breasts that it looks like it might split down the middle and start making two new letters.

Drag Queen wisdom of the day - "Girl, just because it goes on, doesn't mean it fits."

Flight attendants skirting past me (probably crop dusting) collecting trash.

And I am smiling wide, happy as loon.

Here’s what’s waiting for me.

A tiny hand in mine that has grown large enough for our fingers to twine together when he walks next to me.

A warm, inexplicably soft cheek he will let me touch endlessly for the next day or so whenever the mood strikes.

Snuggling in our king size bed with all the lights off as he tells me how he has received not one time out or reset in the past two whole weeks.

A sweetly whispered request thisclose that I not do a Mommy Mommy Attack...as he slowly raises his long arms above his head, a giggle of delight escaping his lips.

Two teeth I suspect have waited for me to arrive back from LA so he can get top dollar.

A tired adult student who will tell me “he’s all yours” and then crawl into the middle of our too small king size bed (seriously, where is emperor size? Tzar maybe?), lay back on the piles of pillows, raising his arms so both of us can put our heads on his chest, wrap us up in a warm hug and fall asleep while my favorite five year old tells me all about his week at school, asking at least three times, “Is tomorrow a stay home day. Mommy?”

And I answer, “Yes, my love, tomorrow is a stay home day.”

I love business travel.