Traveling Business Class: How I Enjoyed Traveling Without Paying for It

By Randall L. Erickson PhD

In this unusual memoir and travelogue, a longtime employee of 3M climbs up the corporate ladder and starts traveling the worldfor free. Author Randall L. Erickson, PhD, recalls his adventures of traveling throughout the world. His looks back on being named an honorary member of the House of Lords, meeting the pope one Easter Sunday in Rome, and touring the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

Those stories are just the beginning; he also shares the hilarious tales of how he pretended to be a male prostitute in Madrid and how he was saved from a Chinese prison because he smoked cigarettes. He also provides practical guidance, such as how to find a western toilet in Japan, how to dry your underwear when your luggage doesnt arrive, and tips on experimenting with new foods. Erickson had such a variety of experiences while traveling on business that his wife dubbed him the Forrest Gump of 3M. After hearing about his adventures, theres no doubt that youll agree with her; get some practical advice for having fun while abroad in Traveling Business Class.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475946086

Randall L. Erickson PhD

Randall L. Erickson, PhD, received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1965 from North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota. He retired from 3M after thirty-three years and currently lives with his wife, Nancy, in North Oaks, Minnesota. He still enjoys traveling, but now he has to pay for it himself.

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Copyright © 2012

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-4606-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-4607-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-4608-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012915987

iUniverse rev. date: 9/12/2012

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Learning to Fly

CHAPTER 2 The Land of the Rising Sun, but Mostly after It Sets

CHAPTER 3 Weekends in a Small City in Japan

CHAPTER 4 Long, Long Flights

CHAPTER 5 The Country of Lords

CHAPTER 6 My Favorite Country

CHAPTER 7 Lands of My Ancestors

CHAPTER 8 Popes, Bulls, and Windmills

CHAPTER 9 Planes, Trains, and Cars

CHAPTER 10 The Ultimate Business Trip

CONCLUSIONS

AFTERWORD

DEDICATION

Traveling Business Class is dedicated to my wife, Nancy, who took care of everything at home during my work travels. To my daughter Amy, who encouraged me to finish this book and helped me do this by giving me Dragon Dictate, and to my other daughters, Lisa and Susan, who had to put up with listening to my travel stories. To my good friend John Miller, who encouraged me to tell these stories. And to my travel mentor, Jerry Rowe, who taught me how to fly business class.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the best boss I had at 3M, Ray Richelsen, and to all of 3M’s management for giving me the opportunity to travel and see so much of the world. To all of our international business managers who made so many arrangements for me during those trips and to our international technical managers, Joe McGrath, John Petersen, Willi Altemeier, Itoh-san, and Tanaka-san, and last, a special thanks to my good friend Jerry Rowe. Jerry is really a special person who spent most of his career traveling internationally. He set the standard I tried to meet.

INTRODUCTION

Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies, and Tom Hanks is one of my favorite actors. What I especially enjoyed about Forrest Gump was all the bizarre things that happened to Forrest. All these unbelievable things happened throughout the movie, such as teaching Elvis his hip-swiveling dance moves, becoming a football star at Alabama, meeting President Kennedy with the Alabama football team, witnessing George Wallace, even trying to prevent integration and then joining the integration movement, and going to Vietnam, where he became a hero and won the Congressional Medal of Honor, which was given to him by President Johnson. Forrest/Tom Hanks then went to an antiwar rally in Washington, DC, where he appeared to naively support the antiwar movement. And, while recovering from his Vietnam wounds, he learned how to play Ping-Pong and played against the Chinese, which helped Nixon open China up to trade with the United States. And then, how Forrest messed up Nixon by renting a room at the Watergate apartments and witnessing a burglary that led to the Watergate scandal. Here was a guy that had so many unbelievable things happen to him, always by accident.

During my time working at 3M and during my international travels, I’ve had many Forrest Gump experiences. In fact, I had so many unique experiences that my wife used to call me the Forrest Gump of 3M. Some of the more incredible experiences were meeting the pope one Easter Sunday inside Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, being made an honorary member of the House of Lords in London, and getting a private tour inside the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. I’ve also had some really unusual experiences during my travels, such as trying to get loved by a Sumo wrestler in Japan, fighting a bull in Madrid and later that evening pretending to be a male prostitute, almost getting arrested in China but only being saved because I smoked cigarettes, teaching the Japanese how to properly celebrate Christmas in the Ginza, and learning the game called Ten as played in Japan. I also met Al Gore a number of times, first while he was a representative in Congress and later when he was vice president. Al Gore is a really nice guy, but since this book is about my international travels, Al Gore isn’t included in these stories about my travel experiences. (Okay, I’ll include one small story about Al Gore and how it influenced one of my more incredible trips.)

Working for a multinational company, 3M, allowed me to travel to many countries of the world during my work career. This let me see and experience so many wonderful things, and all without having to use any of my own money, except to buy gifts for my wife and children. My company paid for these trips, and they usually let us travel and fly business class! I visited all the countries in Western Europe and most countries in Asia. I didn’t get to see South America, but I did drop down once to South Africa, and I got to Australia and New Zealand a few times. Just think, all this travel, and all paid for by my company!

I had some mentors who taught me how to travel business class and especially how to travel international business class. My primary mentor for international travel was Jerry, and I have included a number of stories about him that happened during our travels together. These stories may make Jerry appear like a typical American traveler: naive, impatient, and perhaps somewhat intolerant of local customs and local food. Okay, Jerry did seem to be like many American travelers, looking for American food, especially hamburgers, and not getting out to explore the cities and towns where he stayed. But Jerry did work extremely hard during his travels, and he was often gone ten to fifteen weeks each year, so this may have made him a little impatient with local things. And because I traveled with him so many times, I learned how to relax and to really enjoy international travel, but by doing things somewhat differently than Jerry.

One of the greatest things to happen to me late during my career was to be given an assignment to live and work in Germany. This happened during the last few years of my career and was such a wonderful experience and such a great way to end my years of work and free travel. During the two years we lived in Germany we had many unique experiences, but they were probably fairly typical of anyone who had a foreign service assignment to Europe during those years. I’m sharing a few of these experiences in Traveling Business Class.

In order to understand how all this crazy, unique, and wonderful stuff happened to someone who was just a midlevel technical manager, and then, later, a technical director in a multinational company, it would help to understand the business I worked in. First of all, 3M is a large worldwide company, and 3M was constantly trying to increase its global reach. We were putting lab and marketing operations into emerging markets while strengthening our efforts in mature markets such as Western Europe and Japan. Growth was our goal, and within 3M, new and improved products most often drove business growth. Creating lab operations in emerging markets that would help realize this growth objective required hiring, training, and continual communications with these new operations and the people in these developing countries.

Most importantly, the business unit I worked in during the years from the early seventies until the late nineties was in traffic safety. Customers in this market, especially those who influenced the purchases and specification of our higher performing products, were engineers: traffic engineers for the governments, production engineers for those customers who bought our products, converted, and sold them to their governments, and university human factor scientists, who would help governments understand the need for brighter traffic safety products. And there was a group we called influencers, who were traffic safety activists looking for ways to improve traffic safety. So who do these engineers want to see from parent 3M in the United States? Someone who is also technical and has a PhD. Who is that? Moi! What a great opportunity this gave me to travel, to meet our customers, and to experience the world.

Now, how did all this Forrest Gump stuff happen to me? If you watch the movie, Forrest never planned anything. Things just happened to Forrest, and things just seemed to happen to me. I never planned any of the stuff that happened to me in my travels, and as I’m sharing in Traveling Business Class, I guess I was just open to enjoy the experiences that might come up on each trip. I also didn’t want to just sit in my hotel room over the weekends but wanted to get out and see the local areas where I was traveling. I also so much enjoyed all the 3M people I worked with around the world, and I am sure they all recognized how much I appreciated them and each of their countries. And I think they could also tell how much I wanted to learn about their countries during my visits and how they could help teach me about their countries. I also tried to pay attention to things that were happening around me during these trips, especially those things that might be a little unique.

Most international travelers probably have similar experiences. I’ve probably even met some of these business travelers during my traveling years, sitting in business class lounges in Amsterdam, Frankfort, Narita, Heathrow, and other airports around the world. As fellow business travelers, especially international business travelers, we’ve spent some hard and lonely times in these international airports and hotels. Some of us have probably even sat together in these hotel bars and business class lounges, having a few drinks together, talking about our kids, and wishing we were home. We’ve talked about them while sitting there drinking a Pilsner, an Asahi, or a Heineken beer. And we may even have sat together on some international flights after putting our briefcases up above us in the overheads after having our luggage checked and waiting for us at the end of our flights; we hoped it was waiting for us, but that didn’t always happen.

As each international traveler reads this book, I hope you’re thinking about your international trips and experiences. What could you do to enjoy that trip more? Why did you just sit in your hotel room and not get out and see the local area? And probably the worst question in the world: Why did you go out for a McDonald’s and not try some local food?

Before we get into the actual book, I should advise you that this isn’t a travel book. I have included a few tourist things from countries I have visited, but if you are looking for tourist information about a specific country, this isn’t a book for you. This book is really just about my travel experiences—what I learned about a country when my objective was to just experience that country. It’s what I’ve learned by relaxing and enjoying a country. So sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy my experiences.

So where do I start? Probably the best place to start is with my first airline flights: the first time I ever flew in an airplane and my first international flight.

CHAPTER 1

Learning to Fly

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I had just finished graduate school after eight years of college, was expecting to earn my PhD in a few months and was getting ready for my first interview trip. The night before leaving, we had some college friends over, including their young son. I was so excited about this trip, which was going to be my first interview trip and my first airline flight. I was trying to share my excitement with our friends. Their young son was just learning to walk, and I started chasing him around our apartment. During the pursuit, I wasn’t being too careful and accidentally stubbed my toe on the stove in our apartment. My toe quickly started to swell up, and it hurt like hell. We packed it in ice, but nothing seemed to help reduce the swelling. By the next morning, my foot was so swollen I couldn’t even put on my shoe. How the heck was I going to make this interview trip? What kind of impression was I going to make with the company that was going to interview me? This trip was important. We’d spent eight years in school, and it was time to enter the business world and especially important to start earning some real money. Even though I was not particularly interested in a job with this company, it was an opportunity to learn how to interview. My wife was so supportive.

Why don’t you wear your bedroom slipper? And I can go to the store and buy you a cane, she said encouragingly.

I wondered if she might be thinking about the money I was going to make after finishing graduate school.

With this kind of support, I knew this trip had to go on. So it was out to the airport for my first airline flight—suitcase packed, cane in hand, bedroom slipper on my swollen foot—and ready to meet the business world.

I boarded the Northwest Airlines flight. It was one of those older prop planes, a 377 Stratocruiser, for the first leg of my trip from Fargo to Minneapolis. The stewardesses … remember that this was back in the mid-1960s, and flight attendants were called stewardesses at that time. They didn’t change their name until ten to fifteen years later. I sometimes still forget to call them by their new name, and I still call male stewardesses, stewards, but there were not many stewards back in the old days. I think their new name is male flight attendants. Anyway, the stewardess shows me my seat. This was going to be great, since I was sitting next to a window and would be able to see everything on the flight to Minneapolis. The only problem, I was beginning to get really anxious. Would this plane really be able to fly? What if something happened during the flight? I’d better start to find out what to do in case of an emergency. There was this little pocket in the seat in front of me, and it had a piece of paper with information about the airplane. I read the entire thing. It told me when and where the plane was built and how many seats it had. It told me what to do in an emergency, where to exit, how to put on my life vest, and how to ditch over water. There really isn’t any water between Fargo and Minneapolis, except for a few small lakes, but the plane might go down in one of these lakes. Everything I needed to know in case of an emergency. But I was still nervous. Something else was in the seat pocket. It was a small paper bag. I read the instructions on the bag. It was a paper barf bag. What a great idea. If you get sick on the flight, you can use this paper bag to take care of any air flight problems you might have. I then put the barf bag back into the seat pocket and pulled out a magazine on Northwest Airlines. Maybe more emergency information was in this magazine. I started to page through it. I then noticed that someone had sat down in the seat next to me and was watching me read the magazine. He was an older man, maybe forty years old! He looked like an experienced traveler. At least he had on a suit. He must have noticed I was a little nervous because he leaned over and asked, First flight?

Well, yes, how did you know? I replied.

He then said, There is nothing to worry about. I fly all the time, and nothing has ever happened on any flight I’ve ever been on.

God did that make me feel better. I stopped fidgeting in my seat, stopped reading how to ditch over water, and started to enjoy my first flight. Everything was great. The plane took off with no problems. The sky was relatively clear, and I could see all the little towns in western Minnesota, all those towns I’d driven through between college and home. You don’t get views like that in airplanes anymore. The new planes, the jets, just fly too high and, except for landings and takeoffs, all you can see is the top of clouds. But back in the old days, when most planes flew at ten thousand feet, you got to see everything.

After about an hour, we landed, and, after completing my first flight, I was an experienced traveler, at least I thought I was experienced. I thanked the older gentleman for his help, advice, and company, picked up my cane, and exited my first flight.

After waiting for about an hour, it was time for the second leg of my trip, Minneapolis to Chicago. I was now experienced and ready. I casually walked out to our departure gate. Well, with my sore toe and cane, it was more like I limped out. But I certainly limped with more confidence. I waited in line for instructions to board, and was one of the first in line. (Even today, I prefer to board early, rather than wait in the terminal area. Must be a habit I picked up on this first trip. Or maybe I’m still always excited about going somewhere and anxious to start the trip.) We finally boarded and, after sitting down, I buckled in. While casually sitting in my seat I started to read a novel. I didn’t need to study the emergency instructions, since I now had that all down from the first flight. After a few minutes my seat partner sat down. She is a sixty year-old woman, and she looks extremely nervous. After searching for her seat belt, finally finding it and figuring out how it worked, she leaned forward to see what was in the seat pocket. She pulled out the card with all the emergency instructions and studied it completely. After thoroughly understanding everything, she replaced it in the seat pocket and then pulled out the paper barf bag. She read the instructions on the barf bag and replaced it in the seat pocket. I then leaned over and said, First flight?

Yes, it is. How did you know? she replied.

Nothing to be nervous about. I fly all the time, and nothing has ever happened to me on any flight. She was so relieved.

I don’t remember anything else about this trip. I know my sore toe, bedroom slipper, and cane didn’t make a very good impression during the job interview. It was the only interview where I didn’t get a job offer. But I really didn’t want to live in Chicago anyway, and the job actually wasn’t very interesting. During the next few months, I took a number of other more successful interview trips, received a number of job offers, accepted the best one, finished my thesis, took my final orals, graduated with a fresh PhD, took a great job with DuPont, and was ready for the business world. It was a chance to earn some real money for a change and to start to enjoy the adventures of the business world and business travel.

MY FIRST INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT

I’d worked for about ten years at 3M before I had an opportunity to take my first international business trip, and it was an emergency trip because of customer problems in Europe with one of our products. In the middle seventies, international travel in our company was reserved for executives. I was just a manager at the time and had no visions of traveling internationally. One of our projects, however, had a large European customer base, and I guess I should have anticipated such a trip. Anyway, one afternoon our big vice president, Jake, called.

Get up here. You have a problem in Europe, and we need to talk about it. I’ve been getting calls and faxes all morning from everyone in Europe.

This was in the days before the Internet, and most of our international communications was with faxes or phone. Jake didn’t need to tell me who it was. We all knew his voice and his decibel rating when things weren’t going right. So I went up to his office to find out what was the problem.

You need to go to Europe. All the damn European managers are calling about the performance problems on your product. (Isn’t it funny, when there are successes, it’s our product, but when there are problems, it’s your product?) Is your passport up to date?

I don’t have a passport, I sheepishly said.

What! You don’t have a passport? Jake shouted. What kind of manager are you anyway, not to expect to need a passport?

Well, I don’t have one. I never expected to go to Europe. Heck, you don’t even approve trips for my director. Why would I expect to be asked to travel to Europe? (This sounds much more aggressive than it probably actually was!)

"Don’t get smart with me. I don’t trust having your director travel to Europe, which is why I never approve his requests for international travel. But you’re going. You know the