The last time I was on an airplane was June 5th.  In two days, I fly out of town for the week, ending a stretch of two months.

For those of you ‘normals’ out there that can go two months or two decades without flying, this probably sounds refreshing, or comforting, or … well, I don’t know because it’s just plain weird to me.

My job requires travel.  That’s just the way it is.  I’ve worn this hat since nearly the early 2000s, and I enjoy the life of being a road warrior.  Sometimes it’s too much – like the job I had in 2015-16 where two-thirds of my life was spent in a hotel.  Sometimes it’s routine – like in Alaska where I traveled four a couple days every four weeks.  Just like all things, when you get used to something, you kinda get used to something.

It’s been two months since my last work trip.  You could guess that with my recent health issues, I pushed back travel.  Honestly, that didn’t play into it.  It’s actually been a shift of some of my duties, most of which required ‘boots on ground’ work before booking something out of town.   Now that schedules are coming together the travel is returning.

And it’s returning with a vengeance.

This week is more pleasure than work.  It’s my nearly annual pilgrimage to Indianapolis for the Drum Corps International World Championship (so expect stuff on banging and blowing all week from me).

In a couple weeks, I am off to Colorado for a week of work followed by a weekend of mountains.

The week after that, my second try to get to Michigan Tech to perform a Graduate Seminar after the first was rudely canceled due to United Airlines craping out on me.

A couple weeks after that, back to Michigan, this time to Ann Arbor for meetings.

September is the start of my judging season as well, when I prance around the country going to marching band competitions, convincing people to let me sit in the best seats and tell them stuff about their show.  I don’t have my schedule well set as yet, but there is always a weekend or two of madness out there for me.

Oh yeah, and I have a request from someone to do work in Germany too.  Not sure when, but it’s there.

So yeah, the travel part of my job is coming back.  It’s the season and it will be crazy.