#44 - Scary family

Due to my carefree attitude on preparation of business travel, I have suffered quite much stress while on the road. After all the experiences I still have an opinion that is clearly better not to worry every time before the business trip and save your thoughts to core business.

Unfortunately it seems that I have unintentionally copied the same attitude also to travelling in pleasure. This has given some hard time to my family, as well. Let me give you one example.

Couple of years ago we spent a relaxing family vacation in La Mange at the Costa Blanca, Spain. After enjoying two weeks of sunny weather, sweaty jogging, sound of waves, relaxing books, cool pool, warm evenings, tasty dinners and ice creams, we were ready to return back to home. Wake up call three at o’clock at night, quick breakfast, packing suitcases to our rental car and we were ready to go. It was dark outside. We were running on schedule, flight was departing around 7 o’clock from Alicante to Tampere.

Soon after hitting the road, the rental car gave an unfamiliar sound signal. We were running out of fuel very soon. We had bypassed the previous service station some kilometers ago. I started to look at the next fuel station with my mobile phone. Nothing at the proximity. The computer was showing range of 20 kilometers. It was still dark and no other cars or people on the road. We bypassed one village at a time, but none of those had a gasoline station. Everyone in the car had some stress already. If we would not find a fuel station in couple of kilometres, we would lose our flight. The computer was showing range of 10 kilometers when I remembered that the next village was the one where me and my wife spent our vacation two decades ago and I thought there must be a gasoline station that is open all night. My navigator indicated two gasoline stations at the village. We found out that the first one was not operational anymore. Tension was growing all the time. We had one more chance. The gasoline station had lights on, but no self-service with credit cards. Is there any service person inside? Yes, what a relief. We filled the tank and drove happily to the airport. Finally everything went well and there are only happy memories left about the vacation.

Lessons learnt:

The business processes does not always fit for private life.

#43 - Wrong exit

Some time ago I got an inspiration of learning new by interacting with a group of innovation experts. That was a good reason for a visit to Bonn Germany. I had a clear travel plan; flight from Helsinki to Frankfurt and train from the airport to Bonn. However, the plan was not enough. I was queuing next to a ticket automat in order to buy train ticket to Bonn. The operation of the machine seemed complicated. I followed the actions of the previous persons buying their tickets and learned how to buy tickets to Colon. When it was my turn, I managed to do exactly the same; i.e. buy a single ticket to Colon. Next I was sitting on a train. After a while the train arrived happily at Colon and hurried out of the train. After my first step outside the train, I realized that this is not the place where I should be. I should be in Bonn. I did not know where the train was continuing and I did not remember the location of Colon compared to Bonn. The train departed before I could even open the Internet access on my smart phone. There I was at the railway station of Colon. After checking the price, I jumped into a taxi. With such a speeding I was very quickly in Bonn and the harm was mainly mental.

Lessons learnt:

Plan is not enough, proper execution completes the targeted results.

Copy with pride is a good principle, but does not suit all the situations.

Dusseldorf-Cologne-Bonn

#42 - Proactive move

Returning back from a long trip is often tiring, which is why I usually took taxi to Tampere airport. Thus it was almost a reflex to walk straight to the taxi queue after arrival. Sometimes there were too few taxis and you needed to wait a long time in the middle of the night to get your taxi. This time I had made an exception and my car was waiting for me at the airport parking.

While flying back from Europe to Helsinki, I remembered my car and decided not to drink any wine with the meal. However, after landing to Helsinki I decided to be clever and avoid long queuing, so I called to Tampere taxi center and ordered taxi to the airport.

The next morning I woke up and felt happy, until my wife asked me about the car. That’s when I remembered that the car is still at the airport. When you are tired, do not try to be cleverer than you are.

Lessons learned:

Do not make decisions when you are exhausted.

Remember proactive thinking.

#41 - The art of persistency

I was flying back to home together with my colleague Mr. V. I think we were the only ones sitting in Finnair business class. We had a hilarious discussion and pretty good meal during the flight. Especially the wine tasted good. The wine was actually so good, that we asked the air hostess, if we can get the wine back to home. Unfortunately the answer was negative; we are not selling the wine, because it is not part of our catalogue. We asked repeatedly if we can get the wine back to home, but the answer was always the same. We even pointed out that we do not necessarily need to buy the wine; we just want to get it because it is so good. Negative result, so we continued enjoying the wine and our hilarious discussion.

It was a nice and relaxing flight. Once we arrived at Helsinki airport, the airhostess gave both of us a package. Inside the package was a bottle of the good wine. We were so surprised and happy.

Lessons learnt:

Do not give up - Persistency is rewarded.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

#40 - No ferry tonight

One decade later I was back in Tromsø Norway again. It was a three generations’ holiday summer 2011; me, my father and my girl. The purpose of the trip was to enjoy the perfect scenery and to participate into the midnight sun orienteering competition in the area that had been rewarded as the most beautiful orienteering area in the world. Such enjoyable three generations’ moments are very rare.

Idyllic competition center in the middle of nature

We had about 90 minutes drive from Tromsø to the competition center in the Kirkevik and the same route back after the competition. The most optimal route included a short ferry ride over the sea. One of the competitions was arranged late evening, a real midnight sun event. Everyone was tired after the race and we tried to get quickly back to the hotel. We drove almost one hour to see that the ferry was no more operation at the night time. We had only two options; sleep on a car until the next ferry in morning or take another route back to the hotel. We chose the latter one and after three hours of driving we were ready to go to bed.

Lessons learnt:

Remember to adjust your plans to the situation.

Route from Kirkevik to almost Tromsø (point 1) +
from almost Tromsø to Tromsø.