People are rewarded with large financial bonuses and promotions for academic and business trips, and therefore learn to crave them, and to crow about how many they’ve been on. The assumption is that travel is automatically fun, worthwhile, and enviable: a status symbol. But really all that’s happened is that these questionably important people (more lemmings than locusts, and therefore to be pitied) spent twenty-eight hours in airplanes and airports, twelve hours drinking, an hour or two at a dull meeting or under-attended talk, and a few hours playing golf or fucking a drunk business colleague, assistant professor, or total stranger.