John Mac's Travels

  Today marks the one year anniversary of my first column on Blogspot. It's a special day for me because When I started this blog I had no idea it would take off the way it did, or that I would still be posting today. Unfortunately, this is also the last weekly blog post I will be submitting to Blogspot. Before I explain why I am sunsetting the blog, let's go back and look at the evolution of how the blog came to be. HOW IT ALL STARTED I am a career traveler for DIRECTV . 48 weeks a year, 3-4 nights a week. I was traveling before the Covid-19 pandemic, I traveled through the pandemic, and in early 2022 as America was "Re-opening" I noticed that most of the hotel, restaurant and Bar staff that I had come to know pre-pandemic were no longer employed at my favorite establishments. Hospitality businesses across the country were hiring anyone willing to work, experienced or not. This new team of service workers were doing their best to learn a job that many had never perfo...

This week I celebrated my 8th Anniversary with DIRECTV . This is my 2nd stint with the company, but my first as an internal employee. I have been traveling 4-5 days a week, 48-50 weeks a year since I returned to the team in 2016. Because 99% of my travel is over the road I have driven hundreds of thousands of miles and stayed in well over a thousand hotel rooms.   The nature of the work I do to support my team at DIRECTV requires me to keep a truck full of equipment in order to fix just about any issue we might find in the field. I sure wish I could fly, but driving is the most productive way I can travel. To learn more about my work with DIRECTV please click HERE. I have had many interesting experiences while on the road. I have responded to Hurricanes, a tornado and numerous natural disasters. I have visited or supported almost half of our 200 local receive sites in the US. I once responded to fully engulfed car fire on the side of the freeway in rural Texas, and even got r...