Alaska Tour Wrapup, part 4
It was yesterday when I was originally composing this post and I was in my favorite coffee shop just a mile from where I live. I was enjoying a cup of coffee and some quiet time before hopping on my bike to go to work to face my first full day there since returning from my bicycle tour to Alaska.
The occasion of returning to work is a good time to share with you my plan for transitioning back to work after my two-month absence. Returning to work after an extended absence is something I’ve done three or four times over the course of my working career. Sometimes it goes well and other times not.
The times it hasn’t gone well, I’ve tried to return to work too quickly. So, for me, that’s the key thing: don’t try to return to a normal working life too quickly. With that in mind, if you’re ever faced with returning to work after your own big adventure, here’s my advice to you: don’t run your vacation balance to zero, if you can avoid it. You’ll need some extra vacation time to use during your transition back to work. I ran my balance to zero on my recent Alaska Tour — I actually have a negative balance at this point — and now I’m having to make up some time by working extra hours. Doing this during a transition back to work is not fun.
My plans for returning to work involve gradually increasing the number of hours I worked each day and taking advantage of weekends or holidays. Specifically,
- Spend some time at home. Get re-acquainted there first. On this tour, I returned on a Sunday and I spent two days (Monday and Tuesday) resting at home.
- Go part-time for a while. In this case, I spent Wednesday and Thursday working a four-hour shift instead of a normal eight-hour one. The most important thing about working part-time is:
- Never, ever work in the morning. This is the most important part of working part-time during the transition. The rationale for this is not complicated: to work in the morning puts you at risk of ending up there for a full day.
- Ramp up to a longer shift just before a weekend. The weekend will give you some time to recover from that longer day of work. For example, I ramped up to a full eight-hour shift yesterday (Friday) and now I have the Labor Day weekend to relax before having to face another full day of work.
I am fortunate to have a manager who was willing to work with me on this plan. Besides the schedule described above, he has helped by not dumping me into a big, time-critical project immediately. That’s been a big help. So far, my transition has been going smoothly.
Besides the transition to work, there’s also a transition back to the complexities of modern life. I call this re-compression and as much as I’d like to bicycle tour the rest of my life, I have to re-compress eventually. Maybe it’s a good thing to not be able to bicycle tour all the time because without experiencing one extreme (modern life), how can you appreciate the other?
In my experience, a bicycle tour is as much about enjoying a simpler way of life as it is about bicycle riding. After all, everything you have and use and worry about on a daily basis is reduced to what you carry with you on your bicycle. After most of my bicycle tours, I’ve experienced a short time just after returning when I’m appalled and disgusted by all the “stuff” I have at home. It’s not that I really have that much stuff, it’s just that I’m not used to it anymore. For example, I’ve got a closet and dresser full of clothing, just like most middle class Americans. When I return from a bicycle tour, I wonder why I have it all. For the past two months, I’ve lived quite happily with just two pairs of socks, two shirts, two pairs of shorts. Why can’t I continue to live that way?
The same goes for the rest of the “stuff” at home: books, furniture, appliances, cookware, electronics, cars. Why do I have so much of all of it? From past experience, I know this feeling is temporary and I get used to it all again.
However, I’m determined not to get used to my car again. If there’s one thing a bicycle tour makes very obvious, it’s that there are too many cars (and trucks) on our highways. Throw in the fact that gas prices are probably only going to go up from here and I have two very good reasons to make a serious effort to drop out of the car culture. I’d like to sell my car and then it’ll be bikes, buses, and walking for me from now on. Pat thinks I should hold off selling the car for a while and see how it goes. (She’s probably right.) I’ve been home for almost a week now and so far, no driving. I’ve ridden in a car once, but I haven’t driven. Even if I eventually fail at this and have to drive my car, I will have succeeded in reducing my driving significantly. And that’s certainly a good thing.
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