Put these in your dictionaries: 5 Travel Terms from Rickatron

Many of you know I travel a good deal for my work at Veeam. While I love meeting new people, taking on a new challenge and seeing new places; I need to be smart about how I book and manage travel. I need to minimize the amount of time gone for family and home responsibilities!

To that end, I’ve got 5 travel terms that you can use to both have tips for your own travel and to understand me when I use these terms on Twitter or other social media!

1. Turn and Burn: This is a situation where a scheduled matter is rather fixed, and arrival and departure times are specifically aligned to the travel times. For example, let’s say I’ve got a day full of meetings in an office that start at say 10 AM and are complete at 4 PM. If it’s Atlanta, I’d take a 6 AM flight, land at 7:30, get in a car around 8 AM, get to a car and deal with traffic and make it to the office by 9:45 for the meeting and then book a 6:45 PM flight for the departure. Keep it close!
2. Dirty Day Trip: This is a situation that is a bit far for a normal day trip. The turn and burn example above is a good example of a “clean” day trip; but what happens when that just won’t work? For example, if I need to go to Las Vegas for a day trip but I live in Columbus, a regular day trip is a bit harder to make happen. A dirty day trip is where I’d leave first thing in the morning (I can leave early and get to a meeting in Las Vegas as early as 9:30 or 10 AM), complete my matters through the day and then take a red-eye flight back. That way I have a full day of availability in Las Vegas but get home swiftly.
3. Soft Red Eye: This has happened both domestically and internationally with me. A soft red eye is where you work somewhere and then head back late in the day, overnight in a hotel where you would connect, and the next day carry on to get home early after spending the night in a hotel (bed and shower) versus a real red eye flight. I’ve done this from the Western US to get home easier before, one time I flew SFO-LAX (overnighted) then flew LAX-CMH. I got home early afternoon on the next day yet could work the whole day in San Francisco. This was something I frequently considered when the Delta red eye from LAX-CMH was not operating (it was a day flight). I don’t like doing redeyes UNLESS I can land in my home town or destination at say 5 or 6 AM. I dislike landing in Detroit, Atlanta, etc. after a redeye, waiting 2 hours to then fly onward my destination or home.
4. Milk Run: When you go somewhere, the Milk Run is when you line up other matters while you there. I’ve done this to line up meetings with bloggers, press, analysts while I’m at an event. Sometimes I will meet with profile customers or partners as well as a good additional use of my time.
5. Triangulation Situation: This a term I use for a multi-point city trip. Usually when you book it, it’s a multi-city itinerary but it is a good way to combine matters so that you don’t have to make additional trips. Last year I did a trip from Columbus to Denmark then Denmark to Russia then to CMH to combine and event and meetings with my team. Next month, I’m going Columbus to Philadelphia to London to Copenhagen to Columbus. This is a 4 point itinerary, so I guess it’s a quadrangulation situation. LOL!
6. BONUS!  The Trip Clip: Especially with industry events, nobody ever notices if you leave a day early (in most situations). Especially for multi-day events, honestly I’m mentally exhausted by the end. So leaving a day earlier really doesn’t harm any kittens.
7. DOUBLE BONUS (credit Vic!) The Tack-ON: The tack-on is a situation where you are completing a matter and then immediately transitioning to a holiday/vacation. This one is reversible in that you could start with a vacation and then transition to the work matter. I’ve done this in Northern California and Spain before.

Hopefully this list of terms is both entertaining and helpful to you if you are planning travel! Do you have any unique terms? Share your creativeness below.