Ali, Geekery Editor
Me, on a train from Paris to Munich. Photo by Renée, that loveliest of lovelies with whom I traveled for half a year.
I didn’t used to have travel rituals — I used to throw everything in a bag and just go. Which might be a ritual in and of itself, but who knows. When I lived in France, though, my school was on strike. So I did a lot of traveling because I had a lot of free time. And the best part was I was living with one of my very best friends — a fabulous woman called Renée who’s now a burlesque dancer and film-audio extraordinaire living in Austin, Texas. We’d known each other since the fifth grade and had independently decided to study in France. Our respective universities (Rutgers and University of Texas) used the same exchange program. So I’m happy to say that most of my travel rituals stem directly from this wonderful person who is so important in my life.
The first is dressing up to travel. Renée always put on a hat (complete with a hat pin we found at an antiques market in Vienna), lace gloves and a dress on to travel. “People used to dress up to travel all the time,” she said. “And now everyone looks so sloppy. I think we should bring it back.” I didn’t own nice clothes though — so I was always in ripped jeans a thrift store leather jacket and tie-dye shirt with an un-brushed butt-length hippie coiffure, looking straight out of the musical “Hair.”
Now, though, I do have nice clothes. So whenever I fly (or take a train), I dress to travel. I even wear a jacket and a bow tie, sometimes. Turns out, there’s a massive benefit to looking nice while traveling. I used to get stopped and searched all the time when I looked like a dirty hippie (and yeah, okay you accidentally pack your Swiss Army knife in your makeup case in your carry on ONE TIME and then you get searched forever. But dammit, I was hiking in the alps). And there was a brief period of time there where I got searched every time because TSA agents didn’t know what binders were? That seems to have been solved, maybe there was some sort of boobie-related training sometime recently. So now, with my jacket and tie, I get pre-checked all the time. As in, no need to take your shoes off, no need to take your belt off, no need to take your computer out. Just gonna test your hands for chemicals or whatever it is that they’re testing for, and then go straight on through. Ah yes, the world is full of assholes who judge you by your clothes and presentation and it doesn’t hurt that I’m white. But there you have it, major advantage. The second advantage is that other passengers take me more seriously. This works especially on all those weird middle aged men we’ve all sat next to who think the only thing you have to do with the five hours you’re in the air is talk to them. But as long as I’m wearing my nice clothes and I look very busy, I can usually get my neighbor to leave me alone enough to read and work. Now when I’m driving or riding in a car, it all goes to hell. I will absolutely look like a slob in a car — my back hurts so much when I drive for long periods of time (and that means anything more than two hours, so). I will put on Harry Potter on audio (Jim Dale version, duh) and yoga pants and just whine until I get there.
The second is the bar car (or airport bar or restaurant). When we were taking trains all over Europe, Renée and I always went to the bar car to grab a drink. Every time. At the time, she had a beer and I had a tea, because I didn’t care for beer (lolololololol). Now, that’s translated into much the same thing — if I’m on a train with a bar car, I go to that bar car and I have a beer. If I’m in an airport and it’s a respectable drinking time, I go have a beer. If it’s not a respectable drinking time (breakfast, for example) I at least go to a restaurant and sit down and have a server bring me something that I can put in my mouth. Because the act of traveling is special. When you travel, you’re literally tracing the exact steps of who-knows-how-many other people. Past, present and future people. How many people go in and out of airports, fly a certain route, take a certain train whose rails haven’t moved since the industrial revolution, driven the same road across the country? How many others and how many histories and stories are you connecting with when you do things like that? It deserves a treat. It deserves a special meal or a social drink, especially if you’re connecting with friends while you’re traveling.
The last travel ritual is something my family has dubbed the Transit Trance. It’s less of a chosen ritual and more of an involuntary one? Basically, if I’m in or on a vehicle of any kind and I’m not driving it, I’m asleep in fifteen minutes. I mean any vehicle. I have immediately and without choice slept on trains, planes, cars, buses and even twice a water taxi in Venice. My family finds this so funny that I have a series of embarrassing pictures of me sleeping on things. Usually my mouth is open and I’m contorted into whatever grotesque position my seat forces me into. I understand that many people would give their right pinky to be able to sleep so soundly and so immediately in transit, so I am sorry to you who must take pills or a few shots to make that happen, but; the Transit Trance is actually really annoying because what if I have shit to do or just wanna, I dunno, be awake for some part of my journey? So part of my travel ritual is either fighting it or not fighting it, depending on how much work I have to do or how bad my jet lag will be if I allow myself to sleep or not during the flight. If I have to write or read something, you will see me with a coffee in my hand AT ALL POINTS during a trip. If I am allowed to give into the Transit Trance, I will drink ginger ale. Ginger ale is the drink of travel. Specifically of flying. I have it almost at no other time.
Maddie, Contributing Editor
This is my free Amtrak Snack Pack that they handed out that time when my train was 3 hours delayed before it even left Chicago. I ate it while reading For Love or Money by Sarah Jaffe and Melissa Gira Grant, which is BRILLIANT.
I avoid plane travel as often as possible, and thus, I have spent many hours on Amtrak, some trips over the course of several days. It’s true that sleeper cars exist on Amtrak, but DAMN THEY ARE EXPENSIVE. The price of a ticket in Amtrak’s coach car is usually on-par with, if not cheaper than, flying, so if you don’t have a couple hundred extra bucks to drop on a train bed, you’ll probably find yourself in the coach car.
Here’s the thing, though — Amtrak coach is pretty damn nice! Seats are spacious. Leg room abounds. They recline, and they have leg and foot rests. You don’t get to be completely horizontal, and you might be beside a stranger, but if you don’t like that stranger, you can probably move your seat, or at least go to the cafe car and sit at one of their tables for most of the trip. You can also bring your own food, and have your own liquids and generally keep your bags with you. Sometimes, if you are delayed, Amtrak will even give you a snack and be extremely apologetic about the whole thing. Most importantly, Amtrak coach never requires you to be suspended in midair by some incomprehensible but apparently reliable law of physics.
For me, a good night’s sleep on Amtrak requires advance preparation, so I can eventually go through the motions of getting ready for bed, and then sort of tuck myself in. The first step comes at the packing stage, when I make sure to bring my sleeping bag, a sweatshirt and my basic toiletries in a bag that I will be able to keep at my feet. Then at boarding time, I do whatever I can to get a window seat. This way, later I can kind of cuddle myself into the side of the train and pretend I’m alone with the passing landscape and/or freight trains.
I intentionally don’t try to sleep during daylight hours while on a train, because that messes with my sleeping patterns. Instead, I wait until a bedtime-esque hour, and then I brush my teeth (generally I get off the train and use the water from my water bottle. It’s not the most dainty method, but it feels nicer than using the train bathroom sink) and take out my contacts. Then I take off my shoes, zip myself into my sleeping bag, fully recline, scrunch up my sweatshirt to use as a pillow, and cuddle into the window. All this plus the comforting motion of a train, and that’s a full night’s sleep.
Riese, Editor-in-Chief
I have extreme packing anxiety. EXTREME. Even thinking about thinking about packing gives me anxiety because nothing NOTHING is worse than being in a place and wishing I had a thing that I left at home. Wait — there is one thing worse than that feeling, and it’s knowing that I am a person who will have that feeling, a feeling which I consider to be evidence of my overall failures as a person; like being uptight and superficial and unable to “go with the flow.” It’s like I have to bring my entire wardrobe just to be sure I have that one outfit that — let’s be real — I’m gonna wear every single day. The problem is that I don’t know who I am, and every time I go somewhere, I change my mind about who I am, and there’s no way to predict which black tank top that mystery person will want to wear!
So my first ritual is being really stressed out for about two days pre-trip, especially if I’m flying, because then I feel like I have no control over my life. Okay, let’s be honest: that’s not a ritual.
I mean maybe I don’t have any travel rituals because every trip I try something new, some new way to make traveling less anxiety-inducing. There are very few constants, besides various ritualistic uncertainties. Like that one terminal in SFO where I go to the same three stores over and over balancing the costs/benefits of various snack options before ultimately getting nothing because it’s time to board. Like changing my mind 86 times about whether I should put my phone in my backpack or my blue canvas bag or whether or not it’s safe to put my boarding pass in my back pocket. Like that I will always, always, always, forget where I put my boarding pass at least three times between check-in and boarding. Like that I will always find a way to almost miss my plane when I’m flying out of JFK.
I wear baggy jeans or sweatpants, my Puma boots that are easy to slip off, and this one grey t-shirt that’s super comfortable and looks awful on me. I used to wear this teal shirt that looked even worse on me, but then it got these weird stains on it.
I hate plane smells. I bring hand sanitizer, scented lotion, travel-sized perfume, travel-sized Febreze, wisps, gum, a toothbrush and toothpaste. The clothes I wear on the plane cannot be worn again during the trip. They must be set aside and never touched again until I re-board.
I can’t sleep on planes. Instead, I read. I read and read and read and read. I load up my iPad with articles and read ’til I can’t read anymore at which point I’ll do a crossword puzzle. I always also bring a journal in case I have an important feeling, all my medications in case my luggage ends up in Dubai or in a fiery pit at the bottom of the ocean, my laptop for the same reason, a water bottle, gum (to chew during take-off), and a book I should read but don’t really want to read that I might read if I’m trapped in a death chamber in the sky with nothing else to do.
Depending on the length of the flight, my fibromyalgia will kick in an hour or a few hours before landing, at which point I’ll begin rotating between doing mini-stretches in my seat, reading and vigilantly monitoring the plane’s progress on those little monitors everybody else uses to watch movies or television. Is that a ritual or a mental problem? I’m not sure.
I never recline. I feel like it’s mean and if I never recline, someday somebody sitting in front of me won’t recline either, and that’s when I’ll know the universe is on my side.
Oh, but there is this one thing: tomato juice. With ice, obviously. Every time. Never on land, always in the sky. It’s practically food!
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Same here! I just ordered it the first time I flew and then every flight ever since. I don’t think I have even tried tomato juice on land. I don’t know, it helps against that weird airplane feeling or something…
I think my Mom must have suggested that I order it the first time I flew as a kid? It’s a total mystery to me but I have a vague feeling that she did
Same with me and cran-Apple juice.
My air travel ritual these days seems to be to stress out over what I’m going to do on the plane for fourteen hours, then getting on the plane, taking an Ativan, and passing out for fourteen hours.
Packing is always an issue for me. No matter how many times I check my bag, I’m not satisfied that I have remembered everything. I probably check that my passport hasn’t magically dissolved into thin air a few dozen times per journey.
I fly a lot (working abroad + transatlantic relationship) but really don’t like air travel because I hate going through airports and no matter how much time I allow, I always feel rushed and panicky and generally anxious. If at all possible, I take the train. My most recent train journey was a 13-hour overnight from northern Spain to Lisbon. My friends mostly reacted with “OMG so long why not flying” but it was completely fine – a few hours of reading time and pretty scenery, then train napping! Way less awkward and uncomfortable than flying.
A thing I regret, to this day, is not doing the 24-hours-roundtrip-of-Italy train tour I thought about while studying abroad.
Yay, I love to hear how other people deal with this super-stressful thing! My partner is a kiwi and we have spent the last three Canadian winters/New Zealand summers in New Zealand. Not exactly as dreamy as it sounds since we are always almost broke, and I am a super anxious traveler and have chronic pain that makes everything that’s already stressful worse.
I basically make the planning part a bit of an obsession, as in we have like four months before we leave and I have a packing list (actually, it is an packing app that I totally love for the mostly false sense of control it gives me).
Probably the most important travel accessory for me, which I don’t think anyone mentioned, is a travel pillow of some sort! I cried on the way to the airport last time because I forgot my travel pillow (can be used soooo many ways – back support, neck support, a way to lean against the evil permanent armrest, or, my fave – sleep on the fold-out tray on top of sweater and pillow. Anything to avoid being awake for 36 hours). But I managed to buy one at the air port for twice the price and it has spaceships on it.
TRANSIT TRANCE. This is exactly my life. I fell asleep on a 15-minute bus once. In planes, I’m usually out before takeoff. And I’m the worst passenger seat buddy for road trips because I will sleep the whole time and the driver will have nobody to talk to and won’t play loud music and therefore has a hard time staying awake.
I AM THE WORST PASSENGER IN THE WORLD FOR THIS AND OTHER REASONS. Other reasons mostly being that I am always convinced that my side has miraculously grown a brake pedal and everyone can see me try to put my foot on it.
I get transit trance for short bus/train/citycat trips, like through the city or something, but hardly ever on long-haul. Weird!
Since I was a kid, I have alwaus been fast asleep within 15 minutes of leaving for a trip
… I am the worst road trip companion too, completely useless to the driver lol
In the last two years I’ve been traveling more and so I have a lot of similar rituals.I clean my entire apartment and buy things you should have in your fridge that aren’t craft beer and chips so the dog sitter feels welcome and also on the off chance I die in transit and my family has to visit my apartment.I traditionally shop for new shirts before I leave town so packing is often done a week in advance, but sometimes I dance around my suitcase making decisions at 2am the day I leave, because I am just too nervous and excited. I make at least 3 playlists,2 upbeat for airport lounging, and 1 slow jam just in case there is turbulence. Sade is good for turbulence. I also usually try to buy a copy of Garden & Gun,Rolling Stone and The Economist before I take off so I have plenty of things to keep me alert. After becoming an inflight babysitter on my last trip to ACamp I have also added a Lisa Frank coloring book and glitter pens to my carry on. Just in case I am consulted on the theme of a chatty 8 year old’s next birthday party. I usually take morning flights so the novelty of being able to have a beer with my breakfast @ 6am is marvelous. For about a year I took the Megabus to Chicago like 10 times. My notebook and fancy pen and my flask made that more pleasant.
I love this idea! I often find myself befriending children and letting them draw in my journal with a ballpoint pen or play with my keys. It would be so much better to have a box of crayons with me!
My packing ritual tends to involve trying on every article of clothing I own to make sure that my favorite t-shirt is still indeed my favorite t-shirt because YOU NEVER KNOW. Also I will never not be cold on airplanes, so I layer like a bamf, regardless of how hot my destination is. And I pack my own food, because binging on overpriced airport snack food to kill time only ends in regret.
Dang, Riese! Aside from the tomato juice and crosswords, but especially because of packing paralysis, despising plane smells, obsessively tracking the flight progress, being physically incapable of re-wearing plane clothes (WHO ARE THE MONSTERS WHO RECOMMEND WEARING A SUIT ON A PLANE SO THAT IT WON’T WRINKLE IN A SUITCASE, AND WHY DON’T THEY KNOW THEY’RE REVOLTING?), and frequent, crippling decision fatigue, we are totally travel twins. High five!
Who the fuck recommends wearing a suit in flight? Unless you were in Business Class or First Class or something. It would be hella uncomfortable!
highest of fives!! i feel comforted by your admission of packing anxiety, i swear i feel like everybody else packs like a buddha
I hope I sit behind you on every flight ever, Riese! I share your belief in reclining karma and never recline myself because humanity and courtesy. (Though I find myself struggling to remember the humanity of any passenger in front of me who reclines deep/early. And my knees may make that frustration and anger known on the back of their seat.)
I also have an extreme aversion to gum, so that can make breathing airplane air really gross sometimes. But, I do understand that folks need it for their ears, so I try not to be obnoxious about that one.
I hope I sit behind YOU on a flight
Whenever I’m traveling I spend the entire week before making and revising lists to make sure I forget nothing. I also spend the entire week prior checking and rechecking my flight itinerary because i’m terrified of something going wrong or forgetting what time my flight leaves and missing my flight.
The entire night before is spent making sure my apartment is spotless (i’m afraid if I’m burglarized while i’m gone the burglars will judge me if i leave it messy) and painstakingly packing, rolling my clothes into tiny rolls and fitting everything together like a puzzle. when I first started travelling, I used to grossly over-pack, now I pack like two pairs of pants and like 4 tank tops and one hoodie (which i’ll be wearing anyway duh) and usually every undergarment that i own (the one thing i actually pack too much of). All my meticulous efforts to pack everything perfectly and neatly are undermined as literally every single time I travel, the tsa people go through my bag and ruin everything anyway.
I hate airports, but i’m okay once I am on the airplane. I used to try to pack books for the flight but I’ve come to accept that it is literally impossible for me to stay awake on an airplane.
also, I ~love~ that crying at the wawa song (mal blum is perfect). but (ironically?) I cannot listen to it without bursting into tears so…
You can never pack too much underwear ;)
I agree 100% regarding (not) reclining. I really wish that it would simply stop being an option. Just have the airline pick a permanent slight angle, and be done with it!
I’m also a huge fan of the ginger ale, as well as ginger hard candies. I always arrive feeling better without a Dramamine haze!
I used to pack the same clothes that I would normally wear- I thought the clothing that’s sold specifically for travel makes people look out-of-place and touristy when they wear it. This was before I got sent to a remote location for work. I didn’t realize we wouldn’t have access to washers and dryers for almost a month. We wound up having to wash our clothes in the sinks and dry them on makeshift clotheslines in the bathrooms… I was seriously jealous of the people with the quick-drying, wrinkle free stuff after that. So I’ve wound up actually having a bunch of stuff that I pack for traveling that I know I can hand-wash and dry overnight, which has really lessened the amount of stuff I pack- now I use carry-ons every time!
“Just have the airline pick a permanent slight angle, and be done with it!”
This idea has never even occurred to me because I always felt like there was something specifically aerodynamic and complicated w/r/t engineering where the seat can be a certain way only after takeoff and it’s an option because making all the seats just recline automatically after takeoff would seem weird and be harder to engineer
I always feel really relieved to meet another non-recliner, if there are enough of us out there maybe we can one day change the world
TRAVELLING, I KNOW ALL ABOUT IT
I understand planes and airports better than I understand people.
Perhaps oddly enough, for someone who spends almost half her life on some flight or another (and the occasional bus/train/etc), I don’t really have any rituals. Or anything that I would identify as a ritual anyway – perhaps there’s some things I do out of habit that come naturally to me but not to others.
Firstly there’s visas. Thank God for Malaysian passports and how they make visas a little less necessary. I was on a Bangladesh passport till my 26th birthday and GAAAAAHHHH I HATE VISAS. All this inane paperwork that they never really check properly anyway.
I almost always keep my packing to the absolute last minute, because I hate packing, it feels depressing. I tend to be pretty good at keeping my packing minimal.
Spare set of clothes on your carryon. Anything vaguely liquid or gel-like in Ziploc bags. All tech on carryon, including chargers – they’re now making it mandatory for phones to be charged before hitting security. Shoes off, jacket off, laptop in its own try, put all loose items in the tray (or just save some time and put it in the carryon), bring passport and boarding pass through scanner/patdown/Xray thing.
And – as I learnt the hard way – DO NOT BRING COOKIE BUTTER ON YOUR CARRYON.
Bring something comfortable to wear inflight if you’re doing a long-distance or redeye flight. No one really cares about how you look. I bring a kaftan or sweatpants and change into that. Those eyemasks you sometimes get inflight? LIFESAVER.
Bring a jumper/cardigan on flight because planes get super cold for some reason.
See if you can afford a one-time airport lounge pass if you’re going to be at the airport for a long time (e.g. a long layover). The free shower & food is totally worth it. I’m still pissy at Virgin for making the passes inaccessible though, boo.
I was actually about to start a YouTube series all about visas and travel tips, but then MH17 happened and I’m still really heartbroken about it. (In fact the timing of this post made me side-eye hard.)
The lounge passes are the best eBay purchases ever. Free drinks, big comfy chairs, plenty of USB and power outlets, newspapers, etc. I think I paid $15 for one on eBay and it was the best travel day I’ve had.
EBAY WHAT
HOW HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE
YOU HAVE CHANGED EVERYTHING
JIM DALE VERSION YAS.
I wanted to add something intelligent but nope.
THANK YOU YES.
I remember when I was still studying in the Philippines and had to come back here with my mom when the school year was over. It was the SOS (same old shit) every. single. time. I think the crew started to get to know us.
Now that I travel back there to see my wife I can see how OCD I can be about things. Did you guys know that I purchase my ticket like 4 months in advance? I DO. Then about a month before I leave, I start to get a little pile of clothes on the floor. These are the clothes I need to take with me for a month or so. Then I write myself reminders on the sticky notes of what to pack in my carry on the day of.
I try to use the same bag I’ve always used, my SBL satchel, it holds my passport and cash and stuff like my diary that I write in while I’m on the plane. I’m totally jealous of how Ali sleeps within 15 minutes because I’ll tell you, being in the air for 12 hours next to someone you don’t know? All you’ll wanna do is sleep. So lately, I’ve resorted to taking Benadryl. As for clothes, I TRY TO LOOK DECENT. Because I know it’ll just bother me that my shirt is in wrinkles at the back if I wear something nicer.
And I bring a small empty bottle of water and ask at meal times to fill it so I don’t bother the flight attendants during the flight. I have to totally agree with the way the plane smells. But I try to be like my mom and use the bathroom the second I board so it hasn’t been used yet by 100 other people =p AND we choose seats that are near the end (yes I know, turbulence but I think my body knows how to deal with it now) mainly because of the bathroom. Think about it, during meals you get served first. So by the time you’re done everyone has barely started to eat and you’re free to use the restroom. Then you don’t have to be the awkward person in the aisle trying to squish your body by the food cart when they’re collecting dirty trays!
I have so many things I have to do on planes. Plane smell is disgusting (no one else seems to notice it though?) so I try to breathe only through my mouth. I press my feet against the floor because sometimes the plane feels weightless and I get worried. I also drink a ginger ale because ginger is meant to be good for travel sickness, but I always end up staring out the window trying not to throw up anyway. All my journeys involve me either sleeping or feeling nauseous, so snoring is the more pleasant option for all involved haha
omg i love that you try to breathe only out of your mouth to avoid the smell!
Wow I’m so impressed with everyone’s smart/helpful/healthy travel rituals.
My ritual (if you can call it that) consists of getting so defeated by the thought of packing that I have a drink, which then leads to another, and then another. Drunk packing is much more entertaining, but I pretty much never go anywhere without forgetting something really essential like underwear or a toothbrush. It also means that I always need to make a stop for coffee or iced tea the next morning before I actually head out to wherever I’m going.
Maybe if I traveled on planes/buses/trains more often I would be a better traveler! But the thought of driving on the interstate for 3 hours doesn’t really inspire me.
last weekend I drove 19 hours to Nebraska for a wedding. I spent the night before making an 8+ hour road trip playlist, made my friends listen to half of it, and then abandoned it in favor of musicals. Then I realized I forgot my pajamas and razor when I go there, so maybe I should spend more time packing…
Oh yeah and I start crying about leaving the day after I arrive in the Philippines so.
I learnt to write obsessive lists after the time I went away for 3 months and forgot to pack socks. That said, on my last trip I forgot to pack my hairbrush, despite the fact it was on my list. Not a great start to the trip given I have waist-length hair. Oh well, at least it was stuff I could easily replace.
Oh, and last time I travelled I already had a DVT from recent surgery, so I spent the whole time scared senseless that it would move and I would die. But on the up side, it took away from my usual fears of the plane going down.
Am I the only person who finds turbulence comforting? Feels like I’m being rocked in a swing.
I’m with you! But more because I’m terrified of heights BUT ALSO an adrenaline junkie, so I appreciate those brief moments of weightlessness + increased heartrate.
no but sometimes i feel like the only one who thinks driving down curvy mountain roads without breaking to turn is a thrilling feeling to have as a human being
I call shotgun
I fly a LOT, since I’m going to school away from home and have grandparents with Super Elite airline status. Most of my travel rituals involve planning what I’m going to pack weeks in advance, then not actually packing til the night before a 3 AM flight. I also manage to somehow overpack, yet forget important things like chargers and pyjamas. Despite all that, I have my packing down to a system and can get through Security in under 2 minutes if there’s nobody in front of me.
I also download a bunch of “teaser” game apps (you know, those ones that give you approximately 3 levels of play before making you buy the “full” version), which I rarely use but are nice to have for delays and stuff. On the plane, I read the inflight magazine during take-off and landing – I always make sure to “save” some for landing and/or the flight home. There have been a couple of times where the airline hasn’t changed the magazine over on the first of the month, so I’ve ended up with the same issue on two separate trips and it’s SO DISAPPOINTING, GUISE.
Oh, and people who put their seats back are the WORST. I’m not above shoving their seat if I need to bend over or get out of mine.
Ali just blew my mind and made traveling feel so important. HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE ALSO STOOD IN THIS SPOT, SAT IN THIS SEAT, USED THIS TOILET? It will never be the same.
Also I feel like Riese and I could be special travel buddies, commiserating over our shared “rituals” (mental issues), which may actually just increase both of our anxieties. It would surely be a good time.
I used to travel all the time with a friend who thought the plane was going to crash or get hijacked every.single.time and went completely insane on flights (i love you natalie) and i found my anxieties at least felt mild compared to hers, so that was relaxing for me
Is it not common to think that about every flight you’re on? Is that not what other people mean when they say they hate flying or are afraid of flying? That’s definitely what I mean.
she literally breaks into a cold shaky terrifying sweat and grips both of my hands with intense ferocity while manaically yelling that i tell her stories about happy times for the duration of takeoff and then she spends the flight in the back chatting with the flight attendants and asking them to tell her stories to distract her from our inevitable demise and then we repeat the hand-gripping storytime for landing
i stopped flying for like a year because i was afraid of terrorists but maybe that’s another post
I think about my flight blowing up a lot, and I enjoy flying (well, partially, but I’m not scared about it). I think it’s more a morbid sense of “well I keep flying all the time, when will it be my turn to die in a plane crash”. Bad grasp of stats, but still.
dear god. I would knock her out.
Lol, that’s all I think about when I’m traveling. <3
I don’t travel as much as I’d like to, but Xanax is a very crucial travel ritual for me.
The last time I traveled I forgot what day I was suppose to be at the airport? Yeah. That totally happened. So, I’m at the laundromat, it’s 8pm and my friend calls me to ask me if I was on my way to LAX. I was like, “dude, it’s tomorrow. why do you think I’m doing my laundry now?” She was like, “nooo! get your ass down here, we’re leaving tonight!” So, I grabbed my humid clothes out of the dryer, drove back home and stuffed everything into my luggage. I barely made it on time and I spent a lot of mornings ironing out my clothes which sucked because who wants to be doing that on vacation?
You know, if it were possible – I’d just throw everything into a black plastic bag, hobo style. I don’t even care.
I always, always make sure to bring earplugs and a sleeping mask for any overnight flights/buses/trains, mostly because I can’t sleep if there’s too much light/sound.
I also always bring a nice big scarf with me, which can be used to stay warm on the freezing cold plane, as a pillow, or as something to hold on your lap (which I find very comforting for whatever reason).
Also, I have maybe found a good trick to beat jetlag: get horribly sleep-deprived in your home timezone then take an overnight flight during which you don’t sleep. By the time you arrive at your destination, you will be able to fall asleep pretty much whenever/wherever, no matter what time it is at home. (This was, of course, discovered entirely by accident when I booked a flight to Scotland the day after I finished school/moving out of residence.)
For some mysterious reason, oatmeal raisin cookies are the only snack I ever choose when flying. I do not eat them at any other time. Only mid-air when whatever clearly-more-put-together-than-me person next to me pulls out their power shake and energy bar, and I realize that eating is the only thing I can do to distract myself from the misery that is flying, because reading is somehow not a thing I can focus on mid-air and I’m terrified to use my iPod after they say turn off your electronics even though the middle age business man in front of me has been on his laptop for the past hour, this is when I pull out my inexplicable oatmeal raisin cookie and feel like a child when I accidentally spill crumbs all over the seat.
Unfortunately, I can’t find these in those airport news/mini-bookstores anymore. Like, ever. I can find every kind of energy bar under the sun and all the jumbo-sized candy you can imagine but never oatmeal raisin cookies anymore. The inability to perform my only truly ingrained travel ritual causes far too much anxiety than the situation warrants, but I think I’m going to start keeping a supply of oatmeal raisin cookies solely for plane flights.
The most reliable thing about my travel habits is that I will pack significantly more books than I could ever read during the trip (rule of thumb: # books = # length of trip in days + 2). Once as a child I ran out of reading material and it traumatized me.