Preparing for our trip to Turkey, I was a little anxious. The first major overseas trip for Lynnda and me was to Tokyo, Japan, a few years ago. Shale Crescent was part of an economic development mission with the West Virginia Development Office and several other companies.

Then, I was concerned about the long plane trip, over 20 hours. I thought we would be traveling as a group, then learned we were on our own. We were told which hotel we had to be at and when. That created anxiety and stress. Lynnda and I were on our own in Tokyo, a huge city with over 35 million people in the metropolitan area, and we didn’t know the language.

The plane trip was great. We found the Tokyo Express, a high-speed train that took us from the airport directly to Tokyo Station in downtown Tokyo. After a few minutes on the train, I noticed all the signs were in Japanese with no English and panicked.

Lynnda responded, “Well, we are in Japan.”

“I have no idea how to get to our hotel!” I told her.

Lynnda disappeared and was gone for over 10 minutes. She returned excited: “I found a woman who speaks some English. Her husband is meeting her at the station. She said he can help us.”

If Lynnda doesn’t meet that lady, we might still be wandering around Tokyo, lost.

Our train came into the station at the fifth basement level. Tokyo Station is about four times larger than Penn Station in New York City. The gentleman took us outside to the cab stand. That would have been another challenge without help. Then he asked to see my hotel reservation adding the driver would not understand English. He wrote down the hotel address in Japanese and gave it to the cab driver.

The cab was the cleanest we had ever seen. The ride to the hotel took all of five minutes and cost $3.14 American. The cab driver wouldn’t accept a tip.

The rest of the trip went well. We had a Japanese guide who made sure the group got to all our meetings. Lynnda and I had a challenge finding the train back to the airport in massive Tokyo Station.

The trip was a confidence builder for us. We flew halfway around the world to a country where English was not the primary language and thrived. The confidence and knowledge gained of international travel and our ability to handle challenging situations on that trip helped us on multiple trips since. The more we understand international travel, the people, the country where we are going and our full agenda, the less stress and anxiety we have.

We need to do what is right and important despite our fear and anxiety. Initially we weren’t comfortable with the Turkey trip. It will be a new experience in a part of the world to which we have never been. I was a little anxious despite our other international travels. It is an important trip to meet the large number of Turkish companies interested in investing in the U.S.

The trip is a little like skiing Dropoff, the first black diamond (difficult) slope I ever skied. I knew I had to be able to ski hard slopes if I was to continue skiing with my kids and spending quality family time with them.

The night my daughter convinced me to do Dropoff at Winterplace, I remember skiing to the edge of the steep drop and freezing. It was steeper than I thought. Fear of sliding down the hill out of control scared me. My kids and the rest of the youth group were cheering me on from the bottom of the slope.

What pushed me over the edge were all of the little kids skiing past me and down the slope. I thought, if they could do it, so could I. It was knowledge the slope could be skied by a child that moved me forward.

After that, I skied difficult slopes in New England, Colorado and Utah with my children. All those family adventures would have been missed without skiing Dropoff.

What calmed my anxiety on the Turkey trip was seeing our final detailed itinerary. Once I knew how we were getting from airport to hotel and complete knowledge of all the cities we would travel to, other hotels, transportation, individual and group meetings and the return to Istanbul airport reduced my anxiety. Knowledge is key. Most of this trip we will be traveling as part of a group.

Another area of anxiety this week is the extreme cold. Will the PJM grid continue to be able to supply our electricity needs without brownouts and blackouts? We live in an all-electric house. Our only backup is a wood-burning fireplace. It can’t heat the entire house. I’m worried about frozen water pipes like my friends had in Texas a few years ago.

We know from a PJM executive at the West Virginia Governor’s Energy Conference in November that the focus of PJM (our regional power grid covering 13 states) for the last four-plus years has been carbon emissions, not reliability. Starting in May of 2025, PJM’s focus was back on reliability. The grid is playing catchup.

It takes years to build a new power plant. Natural gas power plants are the quickest build. West Virginia has announced three new natural gas power plants. Ohio and Pennsylvania are also planning new natural gas power plants.

The PJM fuel mix can be tracked on their website. Last week for four days, during the extreme cold amidst snow and ice storms, virtually NONE of our electricity was being produced by renewables. When power is needed the most, renewables are unavailable. It was cloudy, and solar panels were covered with snow and ice. Knowledge of facts allows us to make good decisions based on reality and truth. This reduces anxiety, allowing us to move forward with confidence.