The Joys of Business Travel

I woke up this morning three hours before any many is really supposed to wake up. That's because I'm still on New York City time and my body thinks it's about 9 in the morning.

So, here I am in the seventh hour of the morning in Los Angeles and already writing emails and calling the East Coast to get them started on some things.

While I was working, my mind came up with things that every business traveler must love:

1. Ironing your own shirts and suits. The clean press of the iron, making every shirt a slick sheet of paper, crisp and clean. The steam hiss of the pressing iron. The smell of freshly heated cotton.

2. Walking through the morning city or any unfamiliar territory for a takeaway cup of coffee.

3. Looking up at Los Angeles' skyscrapers, their gilt edges and the blue, blue sky.

I talked last night with Charles Paul, who founded and runs Worldwise Education with his wife and a fellow co-founder, who he met in a harbour in Tonga.

It's a great story. Charles and his wife were sailing around the world after the 2001 financial upset and they were in Tonga, where they were due to take 50 pounds of school supplies to a school a few islands away.

In walks Edgar Crocker, who had just stepped off a 145 foot sailing boat. They talk, they share a vision. Edgar tells him to write up a business plan, they do. They meet in Boston, and they get funded.

Now they have a business, which sells art made by kids in public schools, and then delivers a share of the profits to the schools to fund their budgets.

Improvisational. Unique. Kind of the like the candy bar sales, but for a good cause, and it comes from within the school system. Whole Foods is helping them with the distribution of the product.