Brian, before I retired I used to travel all over the place in the service of Uncle Sam. I hated all the airplane trips and the countless nights in hotels, with one notable exception -- depending on how many days or weeks I'd be gone, I'd pack an appropriate number of Civil War books and kill the downtime by reading. I could never have read and re-read so many books if I had had a normal 9-to-5 commuting type job. Of course, the big downside is that I was practically a stranger to my family for all those years.