I've been everywhere, man

My job requires me to travel every so often, but not enough where I would say that I have to travel for work. (Ok… That was confusing. Sorry about that. But I can hear the homeless saxophone player from my office and he’s distracting me by playing the sax solo from “Baker Street” over and over again.) Anyway… I was in Columbus and Cincinnati the past two days for work so I thought I’d run through some highlights of the trip.

- This was my first trip having my very own corporate credit card. Over the years, I’ve seen these things get downright abused by my peers and they still have jobs to this day. Basically, everything goes unless you try to buy cocaine with it. I pussed out and used mine for things like parking, gas and food. Very disappointing, I know. Next time I’ll be sure to try and charge an eight ball or something.

- Another great perk of traveling is being paid for personal car mileage. I put about 500 miles on my car over the past two days, so my company is going to pay me $220. Tax free. Normally this would be awesome as I would have that much more money to waste this weekend buying drinks for girls that I have no chance with, but instead I just spent $200 getting my brakes fixed. So I guess that means road trips = free brake jobs.

- I drove down to Columbus on Tuesday morning and was in meetings until about 4:00. Afterwards, I went to the hotel to shower and change before meeting up with friends. While I was waiting, I headed down to the hotel bar to grab a drink. The bartender was a cute, perky 21 year old college student so I chatted her up a bit. I would come back later that night from the bar and innocently flirt with her while she was trying to close the bar. It was at that point that streamers and balloons fell from the ceiling signifying my initiation into the Brotherhood of Old, Creepy, Traveling Businessmen.

- Before transforming into Creepy McCreepyson, I met up with some friends at one of the newer bars on the Ohio State campus. It was a pretty nice Irish themed pub that featured a “Beat the Clock” approach to domestic beers. Every hour, the price of a pint would go up by 50 cents with the starting price of $1.00. With corporate card in hand, I threw down for a few rounds and some appetizers. A couple of hours later, my check was slightly higher than it should be for someone eating and drinking by himself. So, if any of you know how to explain a $50 dinner tab to your boss, let me know.

- The next day I drove down to Cincinnati for more meetings and then made the 4 hour drive back to Cleveland. On the way back, I stopped at a Bob Evans for lunch and was a little disheartened that the 23 year old waitress kept calling me “Hon”. She was also calling the 90 year old women at the table next time mine “Gals” so maybe that was her thing. Anyway, if you are a Bob Evans waitress under the age of 42, you can not be calling anyone “Hon”, “Sugar”, “Gals”, or any other homespun phrase. Unless of course you have 3 kids under the age of 4 at home. I have a feeling my waitress fit this last requirement, which in this case earns her a free pass.

- If you ever have to spend 8 hours on Route 71 over 2 days, I suggest that you find something to do with your time since it might be the most boring stretch of highway east of the Mississippi. I think I sent out at least a dozen text messages somewhere between Mansfield and Lodi and also completed the Jumble and Sudoku puzzle in the paper.

Overall, I’d say that I like traveling for work because it gets you out of the office for a few days and you get to eat and drink on the company dime. It also gives you a chance to flirt with hotel bartenders, get drunk with old college friends and try to picture that Bob Evans waitress before she popped out three kids. I guess you could do all of these things from the comfort of your hometown, but then it’d be just another week in Cleveland.