Fall Schedule

This Fall is going to be a time of travel for me. Since the crack-down on travel here in the USA I have kind of lost my love for travel. Each time I transit an airport I get mad and let the full body search just tick me off. I feel like I am being arrested each and every time I travel by air. Now, if I really felt it was doing any good I might sing a different song. But, since I know it is mostly a show for the public and really doesn't enhance our safety it just ticks me off. The reason I always get searched is that I can't get through the metal detectors so they do a body search each time. Anyway, enough complaining.

In early October I am heading to Little Rock for a Taiwan mission family reunion. So far it looks like there will be about 130 of us at the event. Most of the those attending were missionaries in Taiwan at some point but there will also be some other missionary kids (MKs) who I grew up with. It is always great to catch up with everyone and just have fun and fellowship with all of them.

In late October/early November I will head to West Point, NY to meet up with a bunch of guys and gals I flew with in the Air Force. We try to get together every other year for the AF - Army game at West Point. We meet up Friday evening for dinner and then hang out all weekend catching up and carrying on. It is always lots of fun and many lies are retold and our feats grow larger and more daring as the years go by.

The last scheduled trip for the Fall is a trip to Paris for an academic conference. I try to travel to 2 major academic Information Systems conferences each year and this is the main international conference for my teaching discipline. I usually have a paper to present and since that is what drives my profession it is expected that all of us stay active in research. The main reason I enjoy going to these conferences is that I get to catch up with friends from graduate school. There were about half a dozen of us (Scott, Pete, Pete, Andrea, Alexandra, and I) who hung out and were inseparable through our 4 years at Pitt. Most of these individuals are also who I do the majority of my research with. So, travel to the conference helps my research and allows me to catch up with friends in person.

The conference will last about 5 days and then some of us are going to head on over to Vienna and stay with Andrea's parents for a few days. Andrea's childhood was similar to mine in that she's lived all over the world. She was born in Africa (Kenya) but lived most of her growing up years in Montreal, Canada. Anyway, her parents now live in Vienna and we are going to do a hospitality check on them for a few days. It should be fun and for the first time in years I am excited about traveling (hopefully I can keep a good attitude going through security). So that is the Fall in a nutshell.

Of course mixed in with the travel is my normal academic calendar of classes and meetings. Since I can no longer fly for a living, this teaching thing has to be the next best gig imaginable. What a life, what a country!!