Traveling Choices
By Karina | February 6, 2012
I flew out to San Diego last week for a conference on Sustainable Remediation. It was great! I love this group of experts who are so committed and engaged in implementing sustainable protocols and methodologies into remediation projects. I had a few observations while I was traveling and thought I would share them with you all!
- Firstly, San Diego is beautiful. It was in the 70s during the day and in the 40s and 50s at night. Sunny every single day! It’s hard to believe that EVERYONE doesn’t live there. I guess it’s good that they don’t, though, because it is a desert ecology and it couldn’t support people with local food.
- There were a few motorcyclists and bicyclists, but not as many of either group as I expected. With amazing temperatures and fair weather I thought everyone would be out of cars and onto two wheels, but I guess that’s not the case. Lane splitting is legal in California, and I think the major reason people ride motorcycles out there isn’t the efficiency, but the ability to get through highway traffic quickly.
- There WERE lots of runners and surfers out there. I would like to think that I would be super fit if I lived out there as well! There’s really no weather-related excuses for not getting out and being active.
- I normally just bring my travel mug with me on trips and avoid having to carry both a mug and a water bottle, but I brought the water bottle this time and was happy I did. The 5-6 hour flights were really dehydrating and it was lovely to be able to drink water whenever I wanted to (and to not worry about a plastic cup).
- I also brought some food with me for the plane ride. Partly it’s because I’m trying to eat a little better, and I didn’t think I’d be able to get a good-for-me snack on the airplane. Partly it’s because I’m incredibly stubborn and I just can’t believe that they will lock us into a flying box for five or six hours and not feed us as part of the ticket price. I refuse to buy food on the airplane if I have a reasonable way to avoid it. On the way out I packed up some leftover indian food into a small profile container and was enjoying it with my handy spork
and a guy leaned across the aisle and said: “oh, you brought your own food? that is really smart.” This post and this post gave me the courage to do so, though. On the way back I used that same container to pack up leftover beans and rice from a dinner out and I had that for breakfast once I landed at JFK. - How strange is it that I can watch the sun set in San Diego, hop on a plane, and arrive at JFK before the sun does?
- I need to figure out compostable containers. The University of California -San Diego, where the conference was hosted, uses compostable stuff - but there’s no separate collection bins, so does it just get landfilled? That’s not cool. I was not sure what to do with my foodstuffs. Happily I could stick to the reusables I brought with me.
- Pro-tip at conferences: if you bring your coffee mug, you may not be able to refill it from the large containers of coffee because of limited clearance under the spigot unless you do this: Slide the container to the edge of the container. Make jokes with your fellow conference goers about busting the place up (make some friends). Fill your mug. Slide the container back just to be friendly. Enjoy your coffee.
Do you have any tips or insights from a recent trip?
Topics: Food, Transportation | 2 Comments »
2 Comments
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i have been using too big of coffee container also, and so far have not made too many messes moving the large coffee urn, only times when the lever sticks!
The last conference I went to had actual ceramic mugs instead of paper cups. Loved it. It just feels more civilized!