Foreign Country: Blythe, California
I awoke at 4:30 and by 5:00 the rental Nissan was motoring down the sparsely vegetated ribbon of interstate between Palm Springs and Phoenix. I had just weathered two straight […]
Category Archives: Business Trips
Parting Shot
It was an absolute gift of a night. The air was like Mom’s kitchen, soft, fragrant, and yielding. The silhouette of black walnut tree and barn roofline featured against a […]
Tender Loin
It was the kind of gathering where a bowling ball rolled across the lush, encyclopedia-thick carpeting might only make it eight inches before hitting the next set of Gucci loafers. […]
Free Nights
It was the same old script from the same old movie. Bleary-eyed businessman, half-dressed, swigging from a bottle of lukewarm Aquafina, clacking away at a hot laptop in a cold […]
Foreign Country: Plano, Texas
It was lunchtime on a sunny summer Friday and I prowled the Dallas suburbs looking for the Next Big Deal. It sounds sexy to be out shopping for a thirty […]
¿Se Habla Tuxedo?
If a team of advance scouts from an alien race intent on overtaking our planet were to reconnoiter from a back table at a business summit they would probably knock […]
Hay Fever
You would never guess it from the marketing materials. The catalogs and print advertisements and websites all feature rock climbers perched on vertical cliffs, backcountry skiers buried in champagne powder, […]
The Most Interesting Man in the Whole Foods
I shuffled along the aisles with tired legs, a sullen look, and a throbbing left elbow. I wore business casual standard: lightweight wool gabardine pants, a blue Tattersall button-down, and […]
The Smell of Work
The iPhone alarm sounded at 4:30am and three hours later the MD-88 lifted off from a promising April morning at Detroit Metro Airport. Seventy minutes of turbulence later it landed […]
Foreign Country – Texas Edition
After two days spent navigating a tight swirl of traffic congestion, Panamanian-jungle humidity, overwrought Tex-Mex restaurants, and the collective false bravado of 100,000 accountants in large pickup trucks, I was […]
Paul Fredenberg 