Going to conference is fun. You meet with interesting people from all over the world, discuss about interesting matters, but it does imply a lot of traveling, mostly flying. Actually, mostly waiting for planes, or security check, or taxi or train. I don't mind flying and I love going to conference, but the waste of time to get there drives me nuts. You may know that I'm an avid motorbike rider, and like some helmet stickers say, "I'd rather be riding" (than wasting my time traveling).

Mozilla has been doing tons of things recently in Europe, which in many cases implies that I must be there:

We have even more to come:

It meant that I'd have to travel even more until I realized that Paris, Lyon, Malaga and Barcelona were "almost" on a straight line (well, if the world is round, straight lines are actually arcs, right? ;-) ). I looked at my calendar, and saw that it was possible to ride there on my new motorcycle Of course, it will take longer than flying there, but I'll do a single long and enjoyable journey instead of three short but boring business trips[1]. It will probably take 12 days (with 5 or 6 days spent on conferences) and the rest on the road, riding on roughly 4500km (that's around 2800 miles for my non-metric readers). I'd be traveling from Friday Oct. 17th to Tuesday 28th.

For those of my readers who imagine me better with a keyboard than a helmet, here is what how I looked like 6 years ago in Death Valley on a bike which is almost identical to the one I recently bought. I certainly hope to have similar pictures taken in the Sierra Nevada (the Spanish one, not the one in California!)

Tristan on a rented Harley, Death Valley, Spring 2002

I'll certainly keep the blogosphere informed about my journey (via Twitter and all), but I won't be less reachable than usual during this period, as one would expect...

Notes

[1] Don't get me wrong: traveling is boring, but attending the events is great!