Letter to the WSJ: Puts Us on a Treadmill

[question everything]

Puts Us on a Treadmill
April 1, 2005; Page A11

Your article on travel gadgets ("What to Pack on Your Next Vacation1" in the Journal Report on Technology, March 21) was one of the most depressing travel-related articles I've ever read. I felt nothing but pity for most of the "normal" people profiled and felt especially sorry for their kids. ("No, Daddy can't play in the pool with you this week either. He's checking his e-mail.") We Americans already spend far too little time on vacation, and now people like this can't even stop working for that short time!

The question is, what are these people working for? It's certainly not to enable more leisure time, or a better vacation, or long conversations over leisurely dinners. It seems to be just a treadmill for the sake of a treadmill, one they are afraid to step off of for more than a day or two. It has often been said that the Europeans work to live, while we Americans live to work. Anyone who needs to lug along all that equipment for what is supposed to be a vacation obviously fits the stereotype for the latter camp.

I suspect that most of the people working so hard at staying in touch with the office are merely inflating their own sense of importance. As one of my best bosses said, "If I can't leave for a week and go someplace with no phone or e-mail, then I've done a really lousy job of hiring and training." We're supposed to go on vacation to recharge our own batteries, not the gadget batteries we're recharging the other 50 weeks a year.

Tim Leffel
Nashville, Tenn.

(Mr. Leffel is author of "The World's Cheapest Destinations" (Booklocker).)

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111232249203395198,00.html

[zbdent]

1. Not a bad idea

Use a treadmill at home to lose weight, and hook it up as a generator to recharge batteries . . . Why can't someone come up with that?

Of course, little electricity will be generated, because the masses will quit using it after the first week, and become more massive.