December 12; California road trip 🇺🇸
Reconnecting with friends and partners, and perfecting my remote-work skills... this was my week 🚙💨
Happy Sunday,
I’m back in the good ol’ US of A this week, heading back towards San Francisco airport as I hit send on this update, after driving an intensely enjoyable 2000 km through California in the past few days.
This trip was to combine long-overdue face time with some of my closest friends and associates, with the pleasures of remote work and what I call road-trip work.
Ever since the start of Covid-19, I had this mental note in my mind that if I manage to get back stateside in 2021, and consequentially wouldn’t have gaps of an entire calendar year or more in my long-haul travels (my last US trip was in February 2020), it would mean the entire situation isn’t too terrible.
My friend Jenn Hirsch, who until recently was Chief Futurist at EY, told me about a week into the first lockdown in March of last year that “the fluidity of travel” after disruptive events with the magnitude of a global pandemic takes about two years to recalibrate back to normal. I keep being surprised about how accurate her prediction was.
Road-trip work is something that Ellie and I learned to strive for as a means of combining time off together and the inevitable inspiration that comes with traveling, with getting things done in a more focused way. It especially works well with trips where we drive every second day to a new city, with the non-driving days reserved for screen work and phone calls.
In the pre-Covid days I used to fly to the Bay Area once every two or three months, usually cramming ten to fifteen days full with meetings and networking occasions. This time around, I decided I’ll just spend quality time with close friends and business partners, and do as much as possible exploring on my own, to let my mind wander about things I’m doing or planning to do in 2022.
And it worked out just great. Next to spending two social and productive days in SF and a day in LA, I got to drive the coastal Highway no. 1 yet another time, as well as do the 17-Mile Drive near Monterey, and spend a whole day at Yosemite, where I hiked the trails at the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for the first time ever.
Unlike in Europe, where you can’t really tell that public life has become more austere since Covid-19, in the Bay Area the Covid changes are quite noticeable. SFO airport is eerily quiet, there is barely any rush-hour congestion on the 101 and 280 freeways, and the Stanford campus is completely deserted at 5pm, with the campus bookstore closing at 6pm; unheard of in other years, when it was the place you’d go for coffee or tea meetings in the evening.
Other interesting things that I noticed is hotels no longer having laundry service, and Starbucks no longer offering self-service condiments, with clients being asked to customize and place their drinks orders through the app as much as possible.
Overall, these changes are likely all for the better. I notice how I’m becoming very comfortable with the somewhat slower pace of networking and traveling, with fewer yet more meaningful trips being planned, and face time becoming a privilege for closer friendships and work relationships.
And then finally, I do recommend solo work road trips. The visual stimulation of driving longer stretches does magic to all the stuff hidden somewhere in the back of your mind. It suddenly all surfaces and floats towards the parts of your brain where it can be used for something :) As long as the region you’re traveling in has good mobile coverage, you can do unlimited calls while you drive, and tether your laptop to your phone for screen-work breaks a few times each day, for a an hour or two each. When I have to travel for work in the Balkans as well as between SF and LA, I always prioritize driving over flying. But also for remote-work breaks, so totally in vogue since 2020, it’s a great way to go.
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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