No – not that kind of trip, although it might have made watching the debates last night more entertaining.  I’m hitting the road for 10 days to travel our great country, check out main street, see some American heroes, and subject myself to more airplane travel fun.  I wonder if I’ll stay in any of the same hotels as the presidential candidates.

I start this trip in New York, where I’ll be exploring the now famous Wall Street greed and corruption people.  I then travel to Bar Harbor Maine to run a marathon (sponsor me and support Accelerated Cure).  As part of this quest, I’m going to search for main street; it seems like I should be able to find it in Maine.  Then I’m off to Boston to return to my post high school roots, have a nerd party with some wikipedia worthy entrepreneurial friends, and explore the outer reaches of 495.   A quick trip by train back to New York and then off to Virginia and Maryland to make sure the leaves are turning the appropriate colors there before they completely fall off the trees.

I’m a PC and I love this country.

I’ve ranted about the TSA plenty on this blog – I travel a lot and find dealing with the TSA one of the more amusing experiences in my life.  So does Patrick Smith of Ask the Pilot – one of my favorite travel blogs.  In a recent post headlined Propped up by a culture of fear, TSA has become a bureaucracy with too much power and little accountability. Where will the lunacy stop? he discusses the case of "pilot re-screening" and the "dangerous airline cutlery."

As I was contemplating how to optimally pack my liquids and gels into a single quart sized ziplock bag I came across an article in the NY Times titled Bag Helps Laptop Pass Air Security.  Apparently, the TSA has been testing new luggage as a result of an RPF they sent out recently.  They won’t certify these bags – rather they’ll encourage manufacturers to adopt a universal logo akin to "this bag is checkpoint friendly."

So here’s what’s going to happen.  50+ luggage / backpack / briefcases are going to appear on the market that say "this bag is checkpoint friendly" on them.  They’ll work for a little while.  Then 200+ knockoffs will come on the market at 50% lower price points.  All of them will say "this bag is checkpoint friendly."  Half of them won’t work.  It’ll now take even more time to get through security because TSA will have to manually check all of these bags. 

I’m sure this will settle itself down quickly into a nice routine, just like the Clear line has in Denver.  Oh – wait – the Clear line in Denver no longer really gets me to the front of the line anymore because the TSA decided it shouldn’t.

Are there any airports left in the US that haven’t been completely infected by TSA procedures?  I know of a small part of one major airport.  Any others out there?  Leave a comment, but not before you buy a new bag for your laptop.

My Q2 vacation came quickly on the heels of my Q1 vacation (since I didn’t manage to take my Q1 vacation until April).  Amy and I spent a delightful week in Positano, Italy with David and Jil Cohen.  This was their big vacation before David goes heads down all summer on TechStars so it was great fun to hang out, relax, and enjoy the magic of some of the best Italy has to offer.

After a week of vacation bliss, we took the train from trash-filled Naples (what a dump) to Milan where we met up with Jeff and Judy Herman for a week on Lake Como.  We arrived to a two day monsoon.  While Lake Como is beautiful when the sun is out, we all quickly got cabin fever.  Amy and I decided to bail and come home a few days early; everyone else decamped to Milan to wander around the city.

Since I had just been on a week off the grid, I stayed connected this trip.  I got plenty of downtime yet kept up with everything going on.  I did take a vacation from blogging which was nice.  Hopefully it will translate into more pith and creativity.  I ran a ton, played tennis and swam every day in Positano, so I’m officially feeling ready for my June marathon.  I did manage to counterbalance any potential weight loss with the omnipresent gelato.

In response to my Planes, Trains, and Automobiles post, I’ve already gotten several questions along the lines of "how do you deal with our insane air travel system" such as:

How do you keep your sanity traveling to the east coast? I’ve just spent the past 6 weeks traveling to New York from Denver and it’s either: get up at 4am only to waste an entire day traveling or take the red-eye.

For starters, west coast travel is much easier than east coast travel.  Denver to SF is about the same amount of effort as Boston to NY (+1 hour each way which means you get up a little earlier.)  I regularly get to 8:30am meetings in SF or Palo Alto when leaving from Denver on the 6am flight.

East coast travel is trickier.  I’ve found the best solution is to take the later afternoon / early evening flight (4pm – 6pm) out of DIA to LGA.  I get to my hotel between midnight and 1am and sleep until 30 minutes before my first meeting.

Now for the magic.  I don’t try to work on airplanes. Instead, I sleep.  I get settled in as quickly as I can and go lights out until I wake up.  Most of the time I’ll make it the entire flight.  If the flight is more than three hours, when I wake up I read a book rather than whip out my laptop (unless I’m going cross-country or to Europe, at which point I’ll do some work.)

The extra two hours of sleep makes all the difference (at least to me) on the travel.  On west coast travel, I have a 30 minute "transition wakeup" (where am I, who am I, what am I, what is that taste in my mouth?) but once I wake up, brush my teeth, and have a large coffee, I’m good to go.  On east coast travel, I get to the hotel, take a shower, and crawl right into bed.  Wham – deep sleep.

I didn’t used to be able to sleep like this on planes (and know a lot of people who claim they can’t.)  I don’t buy this – I trained myself to do this.  When I started this approach I used to sit – wide awake – for two hours doing nothing except relaxing.  I quickly got bored of myself and feel asleep.  As Amy likes to remind me – most of us are so sleep deprived that it’s actually easy to fall asleep if you let yourself (unless you are truly an insomniac – in which case you might actually fool yourself.)

So – if you see me asleep on a plane, please don’t wake me up to say hi!  Just go to sleep.

It looks like Chaos Reigns a Second day at Heathrow.  The spiffy new Terminal Five has some "glitches."  Who said modernization was easy?

I travel a lot.  I always have.  The ease of air travel runs in cycles – we seem to be at another low point where lines are long, planes are full, flights are late / delayed / canceled, and almost all travel personnel (except apparently those on Southwest) are somewhere on the spectrum between grumpy and rude. 

But that’s just travel.  You’ve got to get past the crazy TSA people before you can actually embark on your trip.  The experience of standing in a long line, having to take your id out of your wallet so they can inspect it carefully, unpacking all your liquids and gels, listening to the same inane announcements over and over again, and having a completely random "inspect board pass as you go through the metal detector" algorithm gets old.  Really old.  Oh – and don’t forget to take your shoes and belt off.  All in the quest to fly safer.

When Clear came out with their Registered Traveler program, I was immediately sold on it.  For a mere $100 / year plus a one time $28 TSA vetting charge, they promised me that I could fly through security "faster, with more predictability and less hassle."  Their PR machine has done a nice job of promoting their fast lane.  I paid my money, got my retina scan, and now have my Clear card (actually – my second one – the first one was apparently lost in the mail – ah the secure irony.)

I’ve been using my Clear card regularly in the supported airports that I fly through (so far only DIA and SFO – but they promise many more soon.)  And I can affirm Clear’s marketing pitch – I am flying through security much faster.  But not because of a separate line or a reduction in "are you safe to get past the TSA people" algorithm based on my key biometric data matching up.

Nope – Clear has a simpler approach.  They help me cut in line.  I go to my special Clear line (there’s only one at DIA – you’ve got to find and it remember to go to "the other left" when you enter on the west side of the airport.)  I show the Clear person my boarding pass and id (just like the TSA person, but this person says hi and smiles at me.)  I go to the biometric machine and get asked for the Nth time if I’ve used this before (I say yes.)  I put my card in the machine and do a retina scan (most of the time it works – sometimes it takes a few tries.)  Once I pass, a nice person grabs my bags, helps me undress myself and my laptop into two TSA buckets, and leads me, shoeless – but with the two TSA buckets – to the very front of the TSA check line.  The 126 people behind me in line sneer at me.  The TSA person gives me a really dirty look and then proceeds to double check my boarding pass and ID.  Once I’m cleared, the nice Clear person once again takes me to the very front of the line – this time the front of the metal detector / x-ray machine / whatever it’s called line. 

Pause.  The reactions here have generally been priceless.  Last week the the woman that I cut in front of said "why are you cutting in line?"  I explained that I had paid $128 to Clear (including pointing at the Clear line machine) to "get through security faster."  She smiled a very cynical smile and said "ok – I was just checking to make sure you weren’t an asshole."  And that was one of the nice ones.

Overall, I’m saving a ton of time getting through security with Clear.  It’s easily worth the $100 to me since I get hit with a $40 change fee by United on a regular basis when I miss a flight (even though I’m a treasured 1k / Million Mile flyer with one of those fancy dark brown get out of jail free treat me nicely cards.)  But it’s not because of any fundamental innovation or extra magic biometric security.  It’s because I just paid $128 to cut to the front of the line.

Ahhh.  This all changes tomorrow morning.

Hedge fund Pardus Capital Management which owns 2.6% of Delta and 4.82% of United is urging them to merge.  While this might be good for Pardus, as a frequent traveler on United out of DIA, this sounds like a really bad idea to me.  Probably 50% of the flights that I’ve been on since United came out of bankruptcy have had some sort of problem (mechanical, routing, crew delay, undermined) and I have several situations where the plane simply didn’t show up. 

I’m actually starting to be impressed with the TSA folks – in comparison to United.  At least my experience with them is more random and entertaining – I never really know what to expect.  With United, I’ve become conditioned to just expect that things aren’t going to go as planned.

The really cool thing about having friends like Paul Berberian is that I can act out my desire to participate in a real life equivalent of Being John Malkovich.  Paul has a fascinating new company that is launching at the end of the year.  His product is both physical and virtual; the physical part of it (nicknamed “the bong” by me) is manufactured in China. 

I don’t really have any desire to go on an eight day business trip to a factory in Qingdao, but it’s awesome to read Paul’s description of it in his post China visit – nothing is as it seems.  Now – the conclusion (signaled by the title) is no surprise, but my voyeristic view of Paul’s week was satisfying this early morning in Boulder.

Best “how I viewed it” moment: “Generally negative on the food experience but positive on the environment – we ate inside a giant green house –trippy. BTW dog sucks – it is chewy and tastes like dog!”

As a special bonus this week, I got to go to GwangJu, South Korea as part of my experience of Being Kimbal Musk.  Those pig heads look worst then I envision the dog did.