Keeping Track of Travel

I've mentioned several times on this blog that I used to travel a fair amount in my old job.  One of the other things I did on my old job was make tons of travel reservations for my boss.  He liked to have everything summarized on an excel sheet.  What a pain in the ass that could be.

Don't get me wrong, I like excel, but using it to make simply lists is a bit overkill.  This is the sheet just for April of 2010.  I've taken the liberty to blur some stuff out.  I found this when I went to close out my dropbox account.

I had to keep this thing updated for the boss's use and it seemed I was printing out a new one everyday.  Sometimes I had to fax them out, which meant I had to go through and remove all the color.  God forbid I accidentally let the thing autosave the document and have to go back in and color it up.  It was also very easy to give out the wrong one since so many little changes were being made all the time.

For my own travels I needed something simpler.  I don't require a hand holding, just some way of easily looking up my information, preferably one that doesn't require a lot of organizational effort since I didn't have someone to do all that work for me.

Enter Tripit.  Available online and as an app for both the iOS and Android market, Tripit simply rocks.  Once you make an account, all you have to do is simply forward your travel emails to plans@tripit.com.  That's it.  Tripit recognizes either the sender's email address, or some of the itinerary information (like membership numbers) and easily organizes all your assorted travel information.  It will provide an itinerary for your smartphone and if you go online you can share your trip or print the itinerary.

I highly recommend checking out Tripit if you haven't done so already.  Even for those who only travel once a year, I highly recommend the program.  Did I mention it is free?  If you travel a lot you might like the paid upgrade to track all of your frequent flyer miles and travel perks in one place.  I had to keep a spreadsheet for that too.


Special Note: I'm currently in the hospital having my bone marrow harvested.  Instead of simply skipping some posts or trying to blog the day before, during, or after having several hundred long needles jabbed in my hip, I figured I'd just have Blogger post some entries on a schedule.

Although I am undergoing surgery, I'm well aware that I'm on the easy side of this transplant.  If you could say a prayer for the recipient of my marrow, a woman with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, I'd be appreciative.  If you decided to get yourself on the National Marrow Donor Program, I'd be freaking ecstatic.