Science Travel and Staying Sane

I was looking at my tugboat scheduling for the next couple of months, and while I was at it I took a moment to look back at my schedule for the past 16 months.  The dark areas (turquoise, green, and purple) are days when I was traveling away from home.  Traveling consists of four types: 1) tugboat, 2) conference, 3) other research and 4) family visits (by far the smallest category).

 For 2011, this added up to 152 days (or just over 41% of the year.  This year, I'm doing a little better, having only been away 36% of the time.  I'm not sure if this is more than average for a scientist or less than average (some of my friends regularly go on 3-4 month oceanic research cruises).  I do know that this amount of travel has been stressing me out a little bit, which is one of the reasons that I have chosen NOT to go to a week-long meeting in Hong Kong this month.  Sometimes I feel like all I do is pack, unpack, do laundry, plan for more travel, and catch up on the piles of things that accumulate while I am gone.  The other problem with travel is that I find it really hard to maintain an fitness routine.  For example, in January and February of this year, I was running really regularly (it was awesome), but in March I had a catastrophic equipment failure, which I had to scramble to fix, followed by an important conference in April.  My workout (and life) routine was totally screwed up, and I'm only now getting back into it.

How much travel do you do for research/work?  What's your strategy for maintaining some semblance of a steady routine in the chaos of travel?

This is not what I look like when I am running.  I look more like a cross
between Phoebe from friends and a deranged penguin.

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