Most of the time when I did consulting fieldwork, I stayed within driving distance of the home office. I did occasionally fly to field sites, which became more annoying with all the post-911/post-shoe bomber travel restrictions.
When I had the time, I shipped my field gear to the site or the hotel using one of the several dozen coolers that we always had on hand for samples. But if I didn’t have the time, I packed my clipboard, my steel-toe boots, my hard hat, and sundry other awkward/heavy/metal-bearing stuff in with my checked luggage and then changed everything (this was quite an involved process in the winter) in the airport bathroom when I got my luggage back. And not all airports are set up for this sort of thing – I usually ended up stripping in the bathroom proper because I didn’t have room in the stall to fit my luggage and enough elbow room that I wouldn’t fall into the toilet when I tried to peel a sock off.
I had just finished changing into “civilian” clothing in a small airport when another woman came in and started changing out of field gear. Apparently I’m not the only one who has to do this…
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1 comment:
That's pretty funny. I've never had to do this yet but, I have the feeling I would just fly home in field gear-depending on how muddy I was.
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