Food on the move

Twice a year my day job requires me to travel for several weeks. A colleague and I go across the country and make a presentation all morning followed by a lunch previewing about 20 of the new products our company is working on. We do about 13 shows over the course of 2 to 3 weeks. It's brutal.

Travelling for work sounds oh so glamourous and fun, but consider this schedule: get up at 6am in a less-than-luxurious hotel, try to grab a workout on a crappy hotel treadmill, put on your game face for 5 hours chatting to guests and making a dynamic (ha) presentation that you've already done 12 times, eat the same lunch of the same 20 items (but you have to eat everything so the guests think you like it all), speed to the airport for a 2pm flight, arrive in the next city by 5pm, check into yet another hotel, grab some dinner, drink too much, sleep too little and wake up and do it all over again the next day.

Naturally, for me the worst part is the food. I can't go on stage without breakfast, and when I'm stuck in a hotel my standard -- 1 soft-poached egg, whole wheat toast, tea and OJ -- sets me back about $25. Hotel breakfasts are hit-and-miss; sometimes the poached egg comes set in a cereal bowl with 1/2 cup of warmish water, other times it's perched on a slab of Texas toast soaked in margarine. There are always home fries, even if you don't order them. I often succumb to the temptation of the little packet of Kraft peanut butter.

This is followed by the aforementioned set lunch, of which I ususally eat three bites, then find myself at the airport and starving, truly one of the modern food lover's worst predicaments. I won't even go into the atrocities sold as "food" at airports; you've been there, you've been humiliated by a $10 sandwich filled with 25 g of turkey , a softened piece of iceberg and a triangle of cheese-product. And that's better than the food you can buy on board.

We try to find a half-decent place for a cheap dinner (the company gives us a whopping $50/day for all meals and after that breakfast I'm down to $25). More often we just want a salad and a shitload of booze. Somehow travelling makes you so so tired. But then sleeping in hotel beds is perpetually uneasy-making. Thank heavens the two of us get along like bacon and eggs.