"It's not like I'm on vacation when I'm there."

As many of your know, we now have a world traveler in our family. His name is Isaiah, and a year ago this month, he landed the first job he applied for following his graduation from Westminster College with a computer science degree. He works for a company whose amazing software brilliantly handles registration and session access control for large conventions all over the world. Isaiah is an onsite tech specialist, so he needs to be, obviously, onsite. When he was interviewing, they asked him if he would be okay traveling around 75% of the time during the busy season. "That's what is most appealing about this job," was his reply.

And that is a very good thing! In the past year, Isaiah has traveled to Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Nashville, San Diego, Orlando, Boston, Dallas (several of these multiple times), and others I'm likely forgetting. Internationally, he's gone to Milan, Quebec, Melbourne, and Toronto.

Are we jealous? No. Well, maybe a little. Mostly we are just happy for him. Not many 24-year-olds get to travel this extensively. He always reminds us, though, that "It's not like I'm on vacation when I'm there." Yep, we tend to forget that part. When he's onsite, he generally has to be in the hotel/convention center by 6:30 a.m. each day in order to prep everything before people begin to arrive. He works very long days, often not leaving the center until 7 or 8:00 p.m. Then he has four or five hours to go to dinner (seriously extravagant meals!), and see some of the city before crashing into bed, often past midnight, only to get up and do it all over again the next day.

There are some wonderful perks, though, beyond the travel opportunity. Often clients treat employees from Isaiah's company to various activities depending on the city. While in Orlando, he got to go to Walt Disney World, and in Nashville, he got to go to the Grand Ole Opry. Sadly, until he got there, he didn't even know what the Grand Ole Opry was, which speaks to my woeful lack of parenting, obviously. How could he not know that?
After his first couple of months, his boss asked him, "So how do you like all the travel," to which he responded, "I love it!" Then the boss said, "I'll ask you again a year from now and see what you say." Truth is, after a year, he would say exactly the same thing. Flying has lost all its appeal for sure, but he still loves to travel, and in fact, he feels like a "boring, I wanna die office worker" if he has to stay here in the Draper office very long.

So what wonderful trips are in store this summer and fall? I know he's going to Vegas and San Francisco in August, and then  possibly Cancun in September, Dubai in November, and (as Barney would say) ...wait for it....Berlin (!) in Janaury. Let's go back up to the question I asked above: Are we jealous? Those who know me well also know my dream of going to Germany, but in case you don't, I wrote about it once here. So if that trip comes true for him in January, I might be a tad jealous. But mostly I'll just be happy.

And proud. So proud of him.