It's odd flying today, my first time since Sept 11th. I took United rather than the direct NW flight, so I have a layover in Denver.

The Colorado Springs airport was much less crowded than normal, and the sight of National Guardsmen in full gear is little strange. You see pictures of airports in Tel Aviv, and it's a common fixture, the military presence, but here it's strange. It's Saturday, and I normally don't fly on the weekend, but it's who is with them, looking around in the airport a little more often.

In Denver, on the upper level in the main concourse, it's still on oasis above the crowds. I forgot my usual music, and I don't have my walkman either, just the laptop. It's good to see people out, flying, doing the things that we do, going on business, visiting family.

It's been a while since I've been to Denver, taking direct flights instead. Doing the direct flights gives a different approach to flying. You get on the plane, zone out for a bit, then you're there, especially on sub-1000 mile flights. You arrive, get a car, and you're done. Habit, a routine. A layover forces you to stop, think, watch, and reflect on things. Sitting in the uppper level here today, writing on the laptop, I was brought back to the first time I came up here, sat under an umbrella, wrote some story of some sort on an older laptop, and talked on a cell phone. I smile at the memory, for it was a neat step for me. A step that said I had begun on a path for a career that I wanted. Not just a salary man, in at 9 and out at 5, but someone who had to go someplace for work. Important enough for the company to pay to send me somewhere alone, to set their system up.

That memory in turn, makes me think back even farther, when the Denver airport was new, and I was travelling with a toolbox full of tools, cd's and parts. My big thing then was to have a pager. Cell phones weren't as prevelant, and pay phone banks were everywhere. Engineers, salesman, and other people on call always lined up at them, solving problems on the road. It had an allure to me then, and still does.

The trappings of a road warrior are common enough now to be taken for granted. Yuppies reading email while waiting at the gate, oversized women in Tommy shirts yakking on cell phones walking down the aisles. So many people with laptop bags, the male version of a purse. Yet I still cannot take it for granted. We all have our dreams, and this was one of mine. You don't give up easily on dreams , especially ones for work. I still think back to Boston, and what I wanted to do when I grew up. I've gone across the country many times for many reasons now, and never do I fail to appreciate that I can.

Layovers are boring for most people, a dead time to read a book, sleep, or talk to fellow travellers. Yet I view this time as solely my time. I'm headed somewhere for work, to go spend all night working on systems, and headed from home and family, yet right now, right here, it's all for me. My Time. Each word worthy of capitalization, as if in a title, and maybe it is a good title of a book. It's decompression time, reflection time, thinking time, My Time. So infrequently you get a dedicated hour under an umbrella, a latte and a pretzel, and nothing to do but focus your mind inward to what makes you tick.

We rush to work, we rush to the store, we rush home, we rush with our kids, we just rush. It's self-induced, most of it, and we sometimes fail to see how it hurts us. A constant level of needless stress inflicts us, and we dont know what to make of free time. Thus we rush to fill that free time with some activity, going to the store, doing a home project, but each of the activites, if done at a regular pace, takes up slightly more time than we have, so we rush still further.

It's a small thing really, sitting down and writing, having a latte, but it's equally as relaxing as being on vacation. How many times do you see a family or couple on vacation, all stressed out, in a hurry to enjoy their time, make sure their money is well spent? Yet, given the chance for free time, I look around on this floor, and only see 1/2 dozen people, feet up, relaxed, essentially on vacation, at the airport.

So I kind of wonder what it really is that I like about travelling for work. It's certainly not the hours that I like, the 18 hour days are pretty taxing. It has to be the vacation aspect of it- the fact that you stay in a nice hotel, usually nicer than when you really are on vacation, the rental car, the simple fact that you aren't at home, and have free time.

I think about a past vacation to Oahu, and there are a few things that immediately come to mind. First is the 4 hour layover at LAX. Four hours for a layover is a long time, yet we spent it at the international terminal, collecting luggage tags, people watching, listening to the many Asian dialects, and eating Japanese airport food with chopsticks. It was a pretty building, lots of people, and whereas most people would have sat by their gate, waiting boredly for their plane, we went someplace far away, talked, ate slowly, people watched, and simply started vacation right there.

The people walking by, they're on a real life screen for me to observe, to analyze, to smile at, or to ignore. It's My Time, and I treasure it.