How to survive travel

SFO has a nice “meditation room,” but it’s unfortunately located way the hell out by the BART terminal. Like, right next to the doors. I suppose if it were more conveniently situated it would be less serene. Sort of the cartoon-guru-on-an-inaccessible-mountaintop principle. Anyway you’re not supposed to use Devices in there.

Edit: I’m not a frequent traveller, but now that I think about it I seem to recall that many major airports have similarly obscure non-denominational chapels to chill out in.

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Allow me to make a suggestion…

These:

Notice, I did not say “ear plugs,” because most ear plugs are total and complete garbage. Those things will blot out the shrieks of a baby in the next seat. They will eliminate the yammering CNN wall of gibberish. Not only will I not travel without those, I won’t go ANYWHERE without them (I always have four with me, in case I need spares).

They’re not easy to find in brick-and-mortars. Accept no substitutes. They are absolutely bullet proof.

I will say this… you have to put them in right. You have to compress them very small and put them all the way in (but not so far that it’s hard to get them out. It takes practice). The idea is that they expand to completely close off every nook in your ear canal. Noise can’t get in. Deep bass sounds will still penetrate, but everything else… gone.

Other travel tips:

– Why would anyone EVER buy food at an airport? The only time I ever buy food at an airport is when I have hit rock bottom and am absolutely desperate. Yes, just one step above sawing off my own leg. Bring your own. Buy yourself lavish and delicious food to offset the drab, miserable, soul crushing horror of the modern air system. Go to your favorite sandwich place and get something great. Make sure to account for the weather. If it’s a scorching day, avoid the mayo or anything that will turn quickly. The only thing I’ll buy at the airport is coffee from Starbucks. Because their coffee is uniformly awful in the airport as well as out.

– Bring a book, but never anything too intellectually demanding. I find that I am so exhausted from all of the BS that one encounters that I can only process the simplest information. Make it something very entertaining. A page turner, as they say.

– Bring a magazine. One (this goes for the book too. You don’t need two or three. That’s added bulk and weight. Make up your mind. ONE!). This is in addition to your tablet, phone, laptop, or portable game playing device. The idea is that it doesn’t require electricity, you can read it during take-off and landing, and it is lighter than a book. Also, the magazines in airports are generally crap. On planes worse still, if you can get one. Plan ahead.

– Take a leak right before your flight whether you think you need to or not.

– Buy an iPod Shuffle. Best dedicated music player EVER. It’s dirt cheap, has insane battery life, light. Sure, you have your phone, but phones have such awful battery life, do you really want to blow that on some tunes? Load it up with podcasts, music, language lessons, audio books. You can easily get more than enough entertainment on 2 GB.

– As soon as you get on the flight, either loosen or take your shoes off entirely. The decision to do one or the other depends on how sweaty or stinky your feet are. If they are stinky, don’t be a jerk and torment your fellow passengers, just loosen the laces as much as possible, but keep the shoes on out of courtesy. Remember that thing? Courtesy? Some people still practice it. Even on airplanes.

– Fart before you get on the flight. Or watch what you eat before a flight. Yes, this seems odd to say the least, but as a full grown adult, I pretty much know which foods are going to put my gasworks into overdrive, and indeed which farts are going to be the foulest smelling. I love beans and I love garlic. And when I eat those things I can pretty much predict down to the minute when the storm will break. I’m sure you can too. I’ll be careful what I eat before a flight. Don’t be a dick! Plan ahead so your fellow passengers don’t have to suffer just because you had an unbearable craving for bean enchiladas. Be nice and others may be nice to you. Even if they aren’t nice to you, be nice anyway.

– Select movies or TV shows which you are going to watch on your laptop that are family friendly. Listen, I love gore, horror, violent anime, action films, sexually explicit content. I think adults should be able to watch exactly what adults want to watch. I love F-bombs and boobies and all that good stuff. But maybe you could just wait until you’re home to watch that episode of Game of Thrones. Do you care if a six year-old sees someone get stabbed through the mouth? You should. Because you’re a reasonable, sane, and moral human. Pick something a little toothless, a little tame. Again, the courtesy thing. Or save the gore and smut for when you’re in the lobby area and you can watch it with your back to the wall and no one looking over your shoulder.

– Parents, control your kids. “I can’t.” Then you suck as a parent. There’s is nothing more agonizing than a desperate, emasculated parent who tries bargaining, threatening, cajoling, begging with a child. If you’ve reached the point where you keep your fingers crossed that your kid won’t explode, you’ve failed. Here’s another thing… your child’s endless stream of observations, jokes, and questions are not adorable to us. To you, they are gold. To us, noise. Make sure your child uses their “inside voice.” It’s a golden opportunity to instruct them how to interact in the world of other humans. And, don’t encourage them to “let off steam” in the terminal either. You’re just making it clear to them that the world exists for their own amusement. There’s a word for that.

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Indeed, thus I want them to learn what happens to people who complain too loudly and incessantly.

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And don’t be brown, like that lab. Browns get far more grief than non-browns.

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What a complete load.

  1. Upgrades simply don’t happen like that anymore. Rewards members get upgrades, paid with money and/or miles, then the waiting list may be tapped (but may not). The waiting list is not first-come. By all means, be nice to EVERYONE in the airport, but that’s just good manners.

  2. Tell me exactly how being early for your flight means no lines at security? Yours is the only flight that day? Yes it’s nice to not be frantic, but taking it soooo slow might just mean slowing down the people behind you.

  3. I saw the Dalai Lama at the airport in Taiwan once (true story). He was surrounded by a dozen hustling-bustling handlers so he could have the luxury of calmitude.

  4. Everyone knows that 22-oz draughts are the only way to kill time in a terminal.

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/\ ---- This.

Look, I used to fly all the time, generally once a week for 5 days, and coming home on Friday night (sometimes, if lucky). You get thicker skin. Not to mention, everyone’s different in their preferences and tolerances. This guy’s post (to me) comes off sounding like White Whine: The Blog Post.

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Another thing occurs to me: once you get decent status miles, you don’t have to show up 3 hours ahead of time. (Unless it’s international, then it’s a bit different)

A few times I didn’t even BOOK my flight until 1:40 before wheels-up. Still ended up with a good 10 minutes before the door closed.

Either this guy doesn’t fly all that much, or he mostly flies international.

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“How to survive travel”… “How to survive blog posts”… “How to survive the comments”… “How to survive crippling self critique”… Wine! Wine! Woo!

Oh yes, everyone loves hanging around Heathrow.

Really dude? I mean, I’m not saying that getting hassled extra wouldn’t make it worse, but all the things I hate about flying (being in airports, being ritually humiliated by the organs of state security, being crammed in a too-small seat in an extremely dry vibrating box stuffed full of people with rapidly varying pressure for many hours, etc.) really apply to everyone who can’t afford first class.

Falcor is a flying “luck” dragon, with a white mane so clean and sheen it gives most great Pyrenees envy.

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Either this is an elaborate joke, or this guy lives in an alternate universe, where seating upgrades are free, TSA employees are kind and understanding, and airports serve inexpensive, healthy food.

Seriously. Don’t do most of what this guy says, unless you relish sitting for four hours in a shitty waiting area with spotty wi-fi and no electrical outlets. Take it from someone who has been flying internationally for 20+ years, if you want it to be less awful, then drinking (or possibly sedatives) is the only way out.

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I have a Sansa Clip Zip. Better sound than my iPods, and I can stick in a dirt cheap 32GB MicroSD card and fill it with music. Plus, I don’t need to run iTunes to put music on it. Oh, and it’ll drive a decent pair of headphones without needing a separate headphone amplifier.

I’ve turned up so early that there weren’t any airline staff to check me in. I don’t mind spending 2 hours at the airport reading a book and drinking coffee.

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Mandatory in my case. 6’8" and anything other than cattle-class is not an option.
Couple of drinks at the bar before, couple of tranqs after the seat-belt signs go out and it’s a pleasant fluffy doze all the way to my destination. Take me a day or three to stop hurting after a long-haul flight, but I’d get that anyway. Might as well be as out-of-it as possible.

You have my condolences. I’m just over 6’0", and even I feel like I’m folding myself in half every time I sit down in economy class.

These are the rooms I always look for when I need a solid 30 minutes of quiet. Hardly ever see anyone else in there either.

I have a box of flentses. They don’t fit, they’re uncomfortable, and they don’t block noise at all. I currently use moldable silicone plugs and over-the-ear protectors, togeher, for everyday errands.

Flents makes different earplugs. And confusingly the names are similar. These are their “Quiet Time.”

The ones I use are the Quiet Please (as indicated in the link in my original comment).

The Quiet Time are totally useless (the rubberized purple coating prevents them from expanding to fill your ear canal completely as is the case with the Quiet Please). As are most other ear plugs. If you’ve found another type that work for you, that’s great. But the Quiet Please are beyond compare (in my experience) and offer almost an UNSAFE level of noise reduction. Unsafe, as in if you sleep with them (and I do), you will sleep through a blaring fire klaxon. Not a smoke detector. I’m talking the full-on fire klaxon they’d put in a major hotel. These will block that.

On the plane if someone is talking to you or near, you won’t hear anything.

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Some people have too much time on their hands, are flying too much, and sound pretentious when talking about it.

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I fly internationally as often as this guy claims to fly internationally and I can’t see why I would do a single thing he suggests on my next flight. I can only think that he either flies so many different airlines that he hasn’t built up any status miles with any of them, or he simply hasn’t signed up for any of their programs (or, less charitably, he doesn’t fly as often as he claims and has no idea what he’s talking about). Me, I usually arrive about 90 minutes before boarding, which typically leaves me an hour in the airline’s lounge with free wifi, a bowl of pretzels, and some Johnnie Walker Black. Not bragging – virtually any airline will give you similar perks if you fly regularly with them.

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