Determined to take carry-on only

August 16, 2012

Late this afternoon I was tending to some errands with the family ahead of being away on a two-week business trip.  One of the disadvantages of having a job that requires frequent travel often to distant destinations is being away from one's spouse and children.  I have two children… a daughter who is 10 going on 11 and a son who turned 5 this summer.  So as much as I thoroughly enjoy business travel, trips longer than 7-10 days for me start to get too long.  So spending some time late this afternoon with my wife and kids ahead of missing out on a couple of weeks of evenings and weekends with them was a top priority.

We all had errands to run in the lovely town of Nelson which is not too far from where I live.  One of the errands was buying some new shoes… the children needed shoes in preparation for the start of the school year come September and my wife needed a new pair of trail running shoes. Also jumping into the buying frenzy, and not to be left out, I decided to buy a pair of light trail shoes ahead of some walking outings with Dave in Singapore and hopefully again in Auckland.  I knew that a couple of our favourite stores should have what we all needed and we were delighted to find shoes to everyones liking at Vince De Vito's.  The image in this post is of the shoes I decided on and am looking forward to trying them out on some walking trails.  They are a model from New Balance's Minimus line of shoes that is part of the minimalist running shoe movement inspired by barefoot footwear.  It's an interesting concept and since I generally do not get sore feet from spending too much time walking bare footed in the summer, or wearing flip-flops, I thought I would give them a try.  But the real bonus to be honest is the fact that these shoes will have a minimal additive effect to my carry-on only air travel philosophy.  They weigh a mere 236 grams (8.3 oz) and scrunch down quite flat to fit very nicely into a carry-on with only taking up a minimal amount of space.

One of the tag lines marketing these shoes is “LESS = MORE”…  ironically this is a concept I have been thinking about a lot lately and one that is relevant in many business situations.  It's also a key point and benefit of effectively putting complexity theory to practice. 

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