Notes from the Road: Planes, Planes, and Beach (Premium)

I travel a lot for work. Rarely do I get to go to a place as wonderful---and far away---as Hawaii.

I don't normally write too much about my work travel experiences these days: It's something I did as a younger guy, and I view it now more as an admission of ignorance than anything else. But after decades of travel for both work and play, this one does stand out. This is a special destination. And, let's face it. When it comes to Hawaii, I am absolutely ignorant.

And I'm not going to see too much of it. We're here in Maui for the Snapdragon Tech Summit, and Qualcomm has booked two and a half very busy days for both Brad and I. But it's Hawaii. And I will just assume that I'll come back and see more later. Just being here makes that more likely. Words simply don't suffice.

Getting here, of course, was not ideal.

I fly to Europe a lot, but those trips are typically 6 to 8 hours in the air, depending, and they're often overnight trips on the way there. This trip was scheduled for about 12 hours in the air, during the day, though it came in a bit under that thanks to favorable winds. I've only been on two trips of that comparable length: New Zealand in 2012 and Israel in 2000. (Both were also work trips.)

But it really took over 20 hours.

How do you turn 12 hours of air travel into over 20 hours of actual travel? By flying out of JFK in New York, which is 2.5 hours from my house when there's no traffic. And there is never no traffic. In the process of booking my travel, we ran out of options closer to home, so I told Qualcomm, which paid for the flights and hotel, that any New York-area airport would be fine. Probably should have done some homework on the distance to JFK.

Adding to my misery, my first flight was Monday morning at 10 am. In order to get there two hours early---my minimum for a domestic flight---and accounting for rush hour traffic, I would need to leave at 4:30 or 5 am on the morning of a day in which I'd be traveling in planes for 12 hours.

Fortunately, a reader recommended an option which I took: You can book a hotel right outside of JFK the night before a flight for about $300, and it includes 7 days of free parking. That's actually a bargain, so I spent Sunday night at the Radisson JFK. It wasn't horrible, and it was far more relaxing than racing out into the dark and driving from Pennsylvania to JFK the next morning. I still didn't sleep well. I never do the night before a morning flight.

I pack light. All carry-on, all the time. I considered bringing a few different laptops with me since I'm in the middle of reviewing several devices. But ultimately, I let Surface Book 2 skip to the front of the line because of its excellent battery life. So I had the Surface Book 2, the Surface Precision Mouse, my iPad Pro, and associated cables, plus my Bose noise-canceling headphones in my smaller bag, and then my clothes, toiletry bag, and gadget bag in my carry-on luggage. I brought the OnePlus 5T as a ba...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC