Tales from the Road 5: Beware the Automaton Traveller

It was 1995. We had been selling capital woodworking machinery through two distributors in the USA for years, one in Massachusetts, and another in North Carolina, but we didn’t seem to be getting much business from the East Coast. So I embarked on a three week trip taking in both existing and potential distributors. Many USA distributors will claim national coverage, but the reality is that most don’t have the infrastructure to support their claim.

My children were 10 and 8 years old, and this was to be my longest time away since they were born. So I did two things. I wrote short poems or stories, or notes giving clues on where to find small presents around the house and garden, and put them in envelopes for them to open each day. I traced a map of the USA and made a fridge magnet with a caricature of my head, so they could track my journey. And they did!

I arrived at an awful Holiday Inn near JFK for a stopover before an early morning flight to Vancouver where we had an excellent Canadian distributor. There was a notice on the door warning of the possible dire consequence of opening it to the pizza delivery man! That was based on a couple of recent gangland shootings where the pizza box had been used to conceal a handgun. The pizza was okay and I am still here.

I had been booked into Holiday Inns throughout my journey, and was relieved when Vancouver’s version was cleaner and less intimidating. I was there a few days and made time between meetings to take in the sights and sounds of the city. My abiding memory was seeing white lights in the distance moving up and down a night sky, and it took me ages to work out that they were ski lifts and not aliens landing.

The 7am flight to Seattle was spectacular, flying between mountain ranges on a clear frosty morning. I spent a long, incredibly hectic day there. It was February 14th, and the hippy cab driver who took me from the airport to my first meeting had a box of heart shaped chocolates in a heart shaped box that he was offering to all his passengers that day.

That was the fun bit. I was late for two out of the following four meetings because I hadn’t worked out my logistics properly. I felt constantly on the back foot. Some of the companies I’d identified as being potential distributors were more like local dealers, something that Google Earth might have signalled had it been around then. From Seattle I flew on to Portland Oregon, to arrive in their Holiday Inn just before 10pm when the restaurant was near to closing.

I left my bags at reception and had my evening meal straight away. Something light for my starter- a salmon terrine. When it arrived it wasn’t a terrine at all but a massive piece of salmon caught that day in the Columbia River. I began to dread what size my fillet steak main course might turn out to be. That was enormous too, a real ‘Tom & Jerry’ steak covering the plate. I managed half of it, partly because I was so tired and partly because it was so vast! I had a brandy nightcap, collected my bags, went to my room and fell on the bed.

There I woke up at 3am still fully clothed, got up to use the bathroom, and in my semi-comatose state I walked straight into the wall! The Holiday Inns I had stayed in until that night had been configured with the bathroom on the right as you walked in, a bed on the right, and desk on the left, and then a sitting room area in front of the window. In Portland, they did things differently. My room was the other way round. So ‘SMACK!’ and it really hurt. I woke up later to my 6am alarm to find an impressive bruise developing above my right eye. It looked like I’d been in a bar room brawl, and I was being collected at 6:30am by an important guy I had never met before!

When you travel extensively it’s very easy to slip into automatic. It’s a bit like that feeling you get after driving from London to Manchester, wondering whatever happened to Birmingham? That kind of thing mainly happens when you fail to pace yourself properly, when you put your mind and body under too much stress. And if you are not on top of your game you will reduce your chance of a successful outcome.

So what lessons can be learned?

1. It’s easy to cram too much into a business trip. It isn’t easy to stay fresh and alert if you do.
2. Plan your trips, and appreciate the size of the country, distances and journey times.
3. Research every company you plan to visit. Know their strengths and weaknesses.
4. Google Earth gives a useful impression of the premises you are about to visit.
5. Don’t arrive for a first meeting with a blackening eye. It can only get worse!
6. Children grow quickly in three weeks.


JOHN REED