When You Could Happily Live Without Family Travel

The topic is Moms on business travel.

I am here to confess that I am (guiltily) quite happy to be a Mom on business travel.

It is so nice to have a chance to worry only about me and what I want to do, not sort out the clamoring clatter of a bunch of kid’s voices and what they want to do. Travel with hubby, of course, is another much more pleasant matter, but we hardly ever get to take a trip anywhere together (kidless) anymore.

Not that hope for a return to those carefree days doesn’t spring ever-eternal.

This past weekend I was up in Fort Worth, covering my first NASCAR race for Motorsport.com instead of my normal NHRA drag racing work for Fast Machines. Even though I wasn’t in a hotel — I was staying with an old high school friend — it was great to be alone to relax and enjoy her company.

We had one dinner in a restaurant and I didn’t have to correct anyone’s table manners or take anyone to the bathroom. I took a nice long shower at one point, and not a single small voice banged on the door to use the toilet.

Unfortunately, business travel usually doesn’t involve much tourist action (I’m working, you know!) so I didn’t check out Fort Worth landmarks like the Stockyards or see fine American art at the Amon Carter Museum. I was in the non-glamorous Dallas Morning News pressroom at Texas Motor Speedway, instead.

But it was semi-divine to just be with myself, driving a car sans McDonalds wrappers.

Evidently I’m not alone in this guilty pleasure; a recent New York Times article quotes one business Mom who confesses,

“I can go home and deal with two screaming 6-year-old twins and a grumpy preteen,” she said. “Or I can go to the Four Seasons in Mexico City and drink Cognac in the bathtub.”

Yeah, I could deal with that bathtub, too.

So if you’re thinking that sometimes family travel would be a lot better without the “family” part of it, don’t feel too badly. You aren’t alone out there as a guilty Mom road warrior.

There are a lot of us pining for that nice, quiet hotel room where we hold the remote and SpongeBob is nowhere to be found.