Between 1979 and 1988, while at CSN, ISN and InformationWEEK, I flew from San Francisco to Long Island at least four times a year.

At first, I stayed in the Great Neck Hotel. It was at 75 North Station Plaza, across from the Long Island Railroad Station in Great Neck. Walking the mile to the office took 40 minutes (today, I would for sure drive that distance). The hotel changed hands and became shitified, as the kids say.

By 1983, CMP put its employees up at the Garden City Hotel–much farther away, but much nicer and classier.

When I was younger, I would stay in Manhattan and reverse commute out to CMP in the morning, usually staying a week. By 1988, my trips to New York had become two- and three-day affairs, often beginning with a flight out from San Francisco on the TWA (or Pan Am) red-eye, followed by a quick shower at the CMP gym.

There wasn’t a gym at Manhasset’s 333 East Shore Road quarters, or 111 East Shore Road, so red-eyes required a stop at the hotel. But there was a gym at 600 Community Drive, CMP’s first purpose-built quarters, when the company moved there in the late 1980s, so I could go straight from the airport to work.