I preface this with the disclaimer that it wasn’t technically a turnaround trip. More like in one night and out the other. Still. There’s something off putting about getting off the plane in San Diego to an email reminding you to check in for your flight back to Phoenix.
But I digress.
I hopped on a plane this time around for a work event. My boss makes fun of me lately for always volunteering to travel for clients (or sometimes, for professional development). My response is always to laugh, because I’m perfectly aware that my constant volunteering fits perfectly into my millennial-working-in-PR stereotype.
However, I also know that work travel is exactly that – work travel. You’re there to do what you’re there to do, not to take advantage of the fact that you’re on a “free” trip.
That said, if that trip happens to take me to a place where I know people, then you can bet I’m going to try to squeeze in a little bit of time with them, when I’m off-duty. After all, you don’t work 24 hours a day.
This particular trip happened to fall on a Tuesday, and my friend Alexis happens to live in San Diego. The thing is, we used to do these things we called “Taylor Tuesdays.” Back in college, we worked the same student job, and we worked the same shift my junior year on Tuesday nights. That shift kept us on campus until 10 (or later, when someone came rushing in to return a camera right at the deadline, but that’s not the point). I had to be at my internship at 8 am the next morning, only a few minutes from school, but I was living a solid 45 minutes off campus. It seemed silly to drive all the way back just to sleep, so we started making Tuesdays our regular sleepover nights. Or, “Taylor Tuesday,” if you will. You know how I love the alliteration.
So, as soon as I found out I was heading her way, I called her up and asked if she would be interested in hosting another Taylor Tuesday. It was the perfect solution – I got to spend time with a friend I don’t see nearly enough, thanks to the inevitable way that life goes once you toss your caps in the air, and I saved on a hotel room. Win-win.
The rest of this story is pretty simple. Lex picked me up at the airport and we treated ourselves to dinner at the Bier Garden of Encinitas. We ate the best burgers (hers, normal… mine, salmon) with sides of waffle fries, accompanied by one of the most refreshing Moscow mules I’ve had in a long time, another throwback to our college days.
The best part of dinner was that we sat outside. Man, I need to move to a place where that’s not off limits during the summer.
After dinner we wandered over to JoJo’s, a local ice cream place that may just take the (ice cream) cake for one of my favorite ice cream joints. Seriously – any place that you can get a malted cookie dough and mint cookies and creme combo is an A+ in my book.
We wrapped up the evening by watching Bachelor in Paradise, which is a testament to how hooked I’ve gotten on this ridiculous reality show.
It was a short visit, for sure, and I barely caught a glimpse of the ocean, but that’s not what I was there for. I was there to work, with a little side of play. And I’m so grateful for that. I’m grateful for friends who will take even the shortest amount of time whenever you can squeeze it in, because let’s be honest — it gets hard to keep in touch when life gets going. I’m grateful for a company that does good work with good clients and good people. So if this quick trip left me with anything, it was gratitude, and we can always use a reminds of the things we have to be grateful for.
