Travel Day once again, but this one is special. To find out why, continue after the jump… Continue reading “Travel Day (12)”
Travel Day (12)
Travel Day (9)
The taxi picked me up at 4:30 am in the morning. The first leg to Amsterdam took a good 60 minutes, leaving Nuremberg Airport at 6:00am. Connection time in Schiphol for the intercontinental flight to Portland is a good two hours, most of which is taken by the security controls before boarding a flight to the US. When I’m lucky I have time for a quick coffee in the KLM Lounge and doing a first round of business e-mails and a quick call or two. The westbound flight to PDX takes about 10h 30 mins.
Delta changes its meal selection every three months, so doing this trip twice a month there is no surprise about the food I will get. I don’t even bother to take the menu any more. Another nasty disadvantage of a frequent traveler is the movie selection. Having roughly 40 hours of flight time a month there is also not much left to see on the inseat entertainment system. Typically I load a couple Netflix movies on my iPad and use this, normally watching one movie per flight while eating. After the food I usually take a short nap on the westbound flights which are day flights. Then I usually work the rest of the flight, which is quite nice as there is no telephone that disturbs, but a good WiFi connection so I have email access.
The Amsterdam flight arrives in Portland at 11:30 am local time (which is 8.30 pm German time). I pick up my rental car and do the 30 minutes drive to our office, where I usually arrive around 1pm. By then my day is already going on for 18 hours. Normally I work until 7pm on my arrival date, then head to the hotel, normally skipping dinner. By the time I’m settled in it is 8pm, which translates to 5am in the morning German time. On the next day! This is a 25 hours nonstop travel and work day, minus the 90 minute nap on the plane. I normally have no issues falling asleep, but it happens that due to the jet leg and 9 hour time difference I’m wide awake at 3:30 am in the morning. And another full day ahead. The glory of business travel. So for all of you who aspire a traveling job – be careful what you wish for 😉
I took this image with my Olympus PEN-F and the mZuiko 12-40mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom. Image specs are 1/15 sec @ f/3,2 and ISO 1600. Raw and monochrome conversion in Lightroom CC Classic.
I wish all of you a great and stress free Wednesday!
Marcus
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Travel Day (7)
After all, I slept three full nights in my own bed before heading westward across the big ocean once more, for about the gazillionth time this year. Sometimes I wonder what the constant exposure to high altitude radiation will do to my body. Today’s trip is Nuremberg – Amsterdam (where I am now) – Chicago. Instead of my usual Delta flight I’m on a KLM flight with the hope to find some new inflight movies that I haven’t seen yet (which is almost impossible) and a new menu (Delta changes it’s food offerings only once every three months, so honestly I can’t see that stuff any more).
I absolutely love Chicago, the perfect city to combine street- and architectural photography, but this trip is business only and I won’t even make it downtown during my roughly 30 hours on the ground. In an office park near O’Hare airport I will meet my peers from other international corporations for our annual round table get together, and I’m really looking forward to this meeting. Tomorrow night I will continue on to Portland for a full week of regular project work, before flying back home in time for the last October weekend (and hopefully a week off). After the jump you can see a few shots I took while being bored during my air travel, there is always an opportunity for some photography 😉 … Continue reading “Travel Day (7)”