noplasticshowers

Using last year’s new nomenclature, I welcome a respite from airplanes during the month of December for no fly noel. There won’t be too many hotel entries this month!

This year the “no fly July” and “no fly Noel” hack kept my travel almost reasonable. The ramping up of Coal Stove Sink helped too. We had 17 professional friends visit in 2011 and the data show another annual 10% reduction in travel (20% over the last two years). You go guesthouse. It’s almost always more fun to have people come visit than it is to hop on an airplane again anyway.

The 2011 tripometer. Trips are trending in the correct direction (down a bit).

During 2011, I flew 100,732 miles on United. My lifetime miles pile now tops out at 1,088,046 (FWIW, I started flying too much in 1996). And for the record, this has to have been the worst year for travel on United since I started doing it. United Airlines’ story of suckiness started with my first 2011 trip in January and kept up a consistent beat of suckiness even to the last trip. The worst flight all year had to be the economy trip to Europe in August. Supremely awful job United. Here’s to major improvement in 2012. (Jeff Smisek, less on Marketing and more on Operations next year, huh?)

I see no major respite from travel coming in 2012. There is simply no substitute to doing business in person, looking people in the eye, and developing a real human relationship.

I am looking forward to resting my bones beside the fire in the meantime.