Mundane Travels in an Amazing World by Michael Bissell

2015-06-01 09:20:38

I flew something like 300,000 miles and visited about a dozen countries over the course of a couple years. No matter what people tell you, there is no glamor to business travel. There are 15 hour travel days, mediocre hotels, and windowless conference rooms.

But wherever I go, I try to take some time and look around, and I realized that my journeys haven't really been pressurized cabins and hotels lacking atmosphere. There's always something to explore, people to talk to, and things I've never seen before.

After some prodding, I started to write down some of what I've seen. I figured I'd write a couple essays and maybe string them together with anecdotes.

Two months and 65,000 words later I found myself with an honest to goodness book. It just sort of came tumbling out -- turns out I've been doing this kind of unexpected travelling for a very long time.

Mundane Journeys in an Amazing World begins with Interstate 80. Not the most engaging topic, I know, but when you think about it, I-80 runs all the way across the North American continent linking San Francisco and New York. It's not just a ribbon of asphalt, it's a portal to far away, almost magical places.

My visits to major cities like Tokyo, London and Washington DC have been business affairs. I haven't rode a lot of roller coasters or ridden in open air buses, but I have visited with senators, bought yams from the back of a truck and barely escaped complete embarrassment when I was introduced to Matt Wiener in Vegas.

As I wrote the book I realized that over the years exotic, distant places have become more like the mundane places I've called home. But, as it turns out, there really aren't any mundane places, only mundane ways of looking at things.

If you have the cost of a latte and a Kindle, you can buy a copy at Amazon by clicking here.