(7:40 a.m., local time) Actually, I’m just leaving Kastrup airport, and heading into the city, thence on to Aarhus. But I am, in fact, in another country, on another continent. Again. For the second time in a month.

As my wife so eloquently put it, “You are insane.”

The flight over was much better than it should have been, given that I was wedged in between a 70 year-old Asian woman in full I Don’t Give A Damn Mode, and a woman who looked to be about 9 1/2 months pregnant and REALLY resented my existence in her space (or maybe just my existence, period, but she had a lot weighing on her… um, mind).

The key to such a situation: Get out of your seat as soon as the captain turns off the seat belt sign, and don’t get back in it until the plane starts its descent. Stand in the galley in the back, be respectful of the flight attendants, and generally give the impression that you know it’s their space and you really appreciate their letting you share it. After an hour, one of them brewed me my own pot of coffee.

It was enough to let me outline tomorrow’s talk on the future of design. (Of course I’ve given a couple of these before, so i could just cheat and reuse one; but while I think that it’s okay to reuse specific slides, or a few in a row– if they lay an argument particularly well– giving exactly the same talk to very different audiences is cheating, especially if money is changing hands. Of course, when i’m famous and arrogant, i’ll feel quite differently.) In the absence of any decent in-flight movies, in the last year or so– dating from my last trip to Denmark, in fact– I’ve developed a ferocious ability to work during a long flight, so long as there’s not a lot of turbulence and I can get a little space to set my papers down.

Come to think of it, the chance to be in an environment that’s totally free of everything in my normal life– office, family, Simpsons reruns– but still encourages writing (indeed, what else is there to do on a plane?) is now one of the great attractions of travel. Not that I would trade my normal life for anything, of course.

The next thing I’ve got to work on is getting more rest during my stay. I tend to run– or try to run– on just a couple hours’ sleep a night when I travel. A little of it is the desire to wring every last minute out of a unique experience; but some of it is just stupidity and bad time management, and the fact that I’ve recently had a hard time getting to sleep on the road. This trip I’ve brought along a t-shit and sweat pants, my normal sleepwear, to see if that helps me get more rest.

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