Wednesday, November 23, 2011

4 Tips for Traveling for the 4th Thursday of Novemeber

Catchy, right?

1. Don’t do it. When faced with the choice between hosting a holiday and traveling for one, I would without a doubt choose to revert to my ancestory ways of the hunter/gatherer. Hunting a turkey and gathering cranberries, even the old fashioned way, is a piece of cake when compared to navigating the frazzled, inexperienced and most likely running late travelers that flood the airports and roadways every holiday eve.

Just like nothing good happens after midnight, nothing good happens on an eve.
Eavesdropping is rude.
Building eves are far too small to stand on.
And if you are out on an eve, you are probably spying on someone or something, so you are going to get arrested or fall and die. Point made.
Holiday eves
are nothing but trouble if you are not in the place you are supposed to be in.
This means you are late, in an accident, or not going at all. None of which are happy.

2. Arrive at the airport the day before your flight. Ok, maybe not that early. Everyone I talked to said that the airports would be a mile past the edge of insanity today. They warned me to bring snacks and plan for delays. They said I should allow 2 hours to drive to the airport. So I gave myself a healthy 5 ½ hours prior to my flight to get through traffic and the assorted lines. It took a total of 1 hour to do all of the above. While I now had to figure out how to wait out 4 hours without standing in a line, I at least was not late for my flight.

3. A) If you have hours to maim, I recommend fajitas and a nice Merlot. Wine does a bored traveler some good.

B) if you are one of the suckers who is habitually still in the security line when your flight is boarding, I would suggest you spend a good couple of months prior to your trip doing yoga and finding your place of serenity as well as find a talented track coach to work on your sprinting ability.

4. Be Thankful! Even if you are still at the airport, you are not working…unless you are me, in which case there is a different multiple step program that needs to be addressed ;)