Tribute to an extreme road warrior

There are road warriors, and there are extreme road warriors.

Scott Hancock, an American media consultant who lives in Tokyo, is without doubt in the latter category. To give you an idea of how extreme he is, consider the fact that his kids, ages five and eight, are United Premier members.

He travels with three laptop computers, two power adapters, four mobile phones, a collection of spare batteries and a portable printer. Most amazingly, the entire setup is stuffed into a carry-on that weighs “more than 30 pounds.”

How did he get bogged down with all those gadgets? Hancock explains, “I ended up with all this because it’s what it takes to do what I need – or might need – to do.” The English PC is used for the basics, like logging into his client’s internal e-mail system. The Japanese PC is necessary because his company handles documents and presentation in various places. The Mac laptop is for graphics and dealing with his company’s advertising agency.

The multiple phones are a result of the phone system turf wars. One phone works on one continent, one on the other. Hancock says the hope of consolidating cellular phones into a “one size fits all” has proved elusive. “Iridium,” he laughs, “was pie in the sky.”

“Then, to make all this work takes a lot of junk – wires, AC adapters, chargers, modules. Then you have the international phone and power situation. TeleAdapt is my best friend for this,” he says.

I wondered why it wouldn’t be possible to pare the number of adapters or phones, but Hancock says less isn’t more in his case. “It’s important to have some redundancy. It all fails at some point, so having more than one way to do something is important if there are clients depending on us.”

The prohibitively heavy carry-on has gotten him into trouble. Once Hancock left the case at the bottom of the stairs while boarding a Boeing 747. He carried his portfolio up the stairs first, then came back down to retrieve the luggage. Too late: a helpful flight attendant had grabbed the bag and tried to haul it to the aircraft.

“He almost bust a gut and immediately said ‘this is way too heavy, you can’t put this anywhere in here’,” he remembers. “Well, I knew I couldn’t argue with him. Fortunately there were a few of my clients on the same flight. I opened the bag and started pulling the various heavy bits out and ran around the plane distributing them to my associates.”

During the 16-hour flight he reassembled the components of his extreme carry-on.

You’re probably wondering why Hancock doesn’t at least ditch the Macintosh. I mean, you can do practically anything on a PC laptop that you can do on a Mac notebook.

Well, almost.

One time, while Hancock was working on a bilingual presentation in San Francisco, he learned how indispensable the Apple could be. “The material was being revised as I flew,” he recalls. “The client was anxiously waiting for it the minute I hit the hotel. I had prearranged a laser printer in my room. I had no idea what kind – and I was pretty sure it wasn’t a Japanese model. Within 30 minutes of getting into my room, I was simultaneously downloading files from Japan and printing them in Japanese on a printer I had just met. I thought this was pretty cool and so did the client when he got his documents in short order. I think that’s my favorite ‘Try THAT on a PC’ story.

Why doesn’t Hancock just rent the equipment when he’s in a hotel? After all, properties offer all kinds of computers, software and peripherals nowadays. Because it’s not good enough, he says. “On a tight schedule, you don’t want to put your career in the hands of a rental person,” Hancock told me. “We do use rental gear sometimes, but still carry enough for ‘survival’. Sounds extreme, I suppose but I feel a strong commitment to the people that depend on us.”

I guess “survival” is the operative word for the frequent traveler. Maybe that’s why Hancock and others like him like to describe their lives in military terminology.

I’m not really sure where the term “road warrior” comes from. Was it the Mad Max films, starring Mel Gibson as a post-apocalyptic hero, that coined the term for a strung-out frequent traveler? Or did the name predate the cinematic trilogy?

One thing I know: if it weren’t for the movie, someone might have invented it to describe Hancock. His gadget-toting lifestyle puts my experience into perspective. I almost feel as if my (non)portable Mac notebook isn’t so bad to carry around now. Even with a portable printer.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

Be the first to comment