Here I am back from my US trip - sorry I didn’t get much chance to blog from there. Yes I had wireless access in my hotel room but a) it was flaky & b) I spent most of my time in the bar

So having had a very pleasant trip and by comparing that to the fairly disastrous one I had many years ago I can now give an informative guide on how to do a US business trip.

Go to the east coast. OK not a choice you may have but the travel time and time difference made NY a much easier option than LA.

Fly direct. It may sound strange that the definition of a direct flight can include landing in between times. The point is you and your luggage stay on the plane. Last time I made my connecting flight but my luggage didn’t.

Fly club. Oh yes! I flew with Silver Jet who only do a single class “economy club”. It wasn’t a great deal more to pay (I wasn’t paying so no big deal but at least it doesn’t look bad on the expenses) and the service was (to my plebeian expectations) excellent. It may be worth checking your contract, some companies expect you to travel cheap upto a certain distance but allow a better class for longer journeys.

Hire (assuming you’re driving) a TomTom - or if you own one get the company to buy a US map. Last time I spent 8 hours driving round LA looking for my hotel on the useless hire car map. This time a calm voice redirected me every time I went wrong - and I went wrong. Driving on the wrong side, in a strange car, reading weird signs and not knowing basic geography (like is Boston north of Newark) increases my already high propensity for getting lost.

Take your laptop. Well obviously. But it has all sorts of uses, email / instant message / voip, play CD’s, as an alarm clock (I never trust hotel alarms or wake up calls until I’ve tested them!), and most importantly as a radio. The one thing I miss more than anything is Radio 4 (sad?) and although I had problems with the wifi one morning I did get the odd episode of the archers (very sad?). Also take a patch cable, more reliable and secure than wi-fi!

And the one thing I forgot - take some tea and milk (even if powdered). With a little cunning I was able to bodge the coffee machine into dispensing hot water onto a stolen tea bag but I had to have it black or else it was “creamer”

Any other tips?