Joe Sharkey

Joe Sharkey, a longtime BJT contributor, wrote a weekly business travel column in The New York Times for 16 years. He's the author of six books, none on travel. He and his wife, Nancy, a professor at the University of Arizona, live with their two parrots near Saguaro National Park in Tucson, where their favorite mode of transportation—short haul, at least—is a horse. A Vietnam veteran, Sharkey has been on virtually every kind of fixed-wing aircraft, including both final Concorde flights and a memorable sortie in 1967 in Pensacola with the Navy's Blue Angels. As a battered road warrior, he says the very first thing he would do if he acquired an extremely large sum of money is order a G650.