Travel Tips for Foxes, part 2 - Travel in Comfort
Travel Tips for Foxes, part 2 - Travel in Comfort
Hello, foxes of the world!
When I say travel, you say comfort! ...Travel! Comfort! Travel! Comfort! I can do my own call and response, right?!? 😂 Humor aside, perhaps the strangest thing about this call and response is that traveling in comfort is often an oxymoron.
But traveling in comfort is the ideal, right? A dream vacation with time travel spritzing us off to magical destinations. No airports, no TSA, no delays, no sick people contaminating shared air, no babies screaming all the discomfort that us adults want to vocalize... no logistical nightmares. Please call me if you know how to time travel. PLEASE.
Recognizing that resources are limited and travel involves a bajillion variables that can create discomfort, I have reframed my perspective of ideal travel. The new dream is to arrive safely at the intended destination with minimal delays, expenses, and disruptions to health. There’s a lot we can’t control while traveling, but we can take steps to maximize our ability to vacation like foxes.
Last week we discussed how to plan your ideal vacation and honor your magic travel ratio. Once you’ve planned your trip, the next step is to prepare [for the worst]. Don’t worry, I promise that this is not a doomsday letter!
My point is that the more prepared we are for likely stressors on our wellbeing, the closer to comfortable we can be. Preparation takes work and forethought, but it’s a price I’m happy to pay. The more prepared we are, the better equipped we’ll be to prevent and mitigate the calamities of travel.
Here’s my method for foxy travel prep, in the acronym “YEAH”. Can I get an “Awwwww yeah” to traveling in comfort?!
Y is for You
You do you, my foxy friend. Prepping for comfortable travel requires in-depth knowledge about the requirements for your wellbeing. Whatever it takes, in light of your travel constraints - such as budget - is what you need to prepare for.
If you can pass endless amounts of time playing chess online, maybe it’s time to download the app so you can cope during delays and transportation. Oh wait, that’s me. Yep, definitely a chess fox.♟🦊
I over prepare with content so that my mind can be entertained instead of stressed over things outside my control. In addition to chess, I also like to download books from the public library and movies from Amazon prime. It’s great to have activities available in a variety of formats so I can distract my brain from perhaps uncomfortable circumstances. Music, audiobooks, e-books, podcasts, offline games, movies, and my iPad for drawing are all at my disposal for interesting, accessible, and free-to-inexpensive entertainment.
Mental engagement is great because it can also distract from some of the physical discomfort of travel. Small seats, long flights, etcetera. But it doesn’t solve everything. Like temperature. Have you ever noticed how much temperatures fluctuate during travel? On a road trip, the sun shining through the windshield will suddenly fry you, same with an hour taxi on the airport tarmac before takeoff. Once in the air, the temperature plummet and your sweat freezes into bone-chilling cold.
My husband often likens me to an indoor plant: I am comfortable in a narrow temperature range, indirect light, with frequent watering. This is part of my “Y is for You” because I recognize that I am acutely uncomfortable outside of my preferred temperature range. Knowing this, I can take steps to avoid discomfort. If you’re like me, my advice is to layer up, buttercup!
There are tons of other ways to prepare for comfort. The secret is to take steps to prevent that which makes you uncomfortable, and to bring accessible content to divert your thoughts. No need to suffer, we’re on the way to vacay!
E is for Expenses
Booking travel is expensive. It’s a bummer to spend tons of margarita money on flights instead of cheers. That’s why it’s important to consider the true expenses of travel when booking.
Yes, it can be expensive to fly direct nonstop. But is it as expensive as a delayed flight? A delayed flight results in more airport time, leading to food and drink purchases, possibly a missed connection, possibly hotel expenses, possibly cab fares, and possibly huge payments of vacation time to the merciless travel gods who like to eat your wellbeing for breakfast. I think I’ll budget for direct, thanks.
It’s hard to know what kind of delays and other road bumps you’ll face, so it’s important to try to minimize the risk of additional expenses. Sometimes the best way to do this is to book more expensive travel. It’s kind of like an insurance policy for your trip, and wellbeing. Take a direct flight and there’s only the risk of one flight being delayed, and you arrive at your destination sooner, without having to pay additional transition costs. If you want a layover in a particular destination, that is okay too! Just be real with your budget and wellbeing about the toll the transitions may take.
A is for Agenda
A good agenda is like a guardian angel for travel. A single page of the essential data kept with your identification keeps the information you need at to your fingertips.
Even when things go according to plan, we need a lot of data to meet our itinerary. Confirmation numbers, addresses, and departure times, etcetera. There’s also a lot we enjoy knowing during travel, like how long is this flight going to take? What will the local time be when we land?
A travel agenda also provides agility when dealing with the hiccups of travel. When a flight is canceled, we can call and have all of our flight info and confirmation numbers at the ready. We can edit the agenda as changes arise, and not waste time hunting down essential information that spans several emails - if we can even access our email! An agenda will have our backs whether or not there’s Internet.
An agenda also provides a guide for family or friends who should know where we are in case we need to be found for safety or other reasons. Remember to share your agenda with at least one other person before you embark on your trip so that you can be reached no matter how remote you are.
In case you don’t already have an agenda format you like, I have created one for you! Well, it’s for me too. You can download, print, and fill it out as you make your bookings. This particular agenda is for direct flights. I will be making a similar agenda for flights with connections that I will add to this page for foxy agendas. That way you can use the agenda that best fits your plans!
H is for Health
The final, but most important component of preparing to travel in comfort is your health! If you do only one thing to prepare, prepare to hydrate. Water, water, water, and more water.
It can be a hassle to use the restroom in airports and on airplanes, to pit stop on road trips, but it is so worth it. We are much more capable of dealing with stress, physical discomfort, and other travel maladies if we are well hydrated and giving our bodies a chance to regularly flush out toxins. Travel spikes the pressure on our immune systems to perform as we are exposed to the germs of the world. Prevent getting sick, and bolster your emotional wellbeing with regular water intake.
It’s easier to stay hydrated if you have an allocated space for a refillable water bottle. Set an alert on your phone to drink and refill if you need a reminder. Or keep a tally of refills on your travel agenda so you can track your intake.
Taking care of your health on the road also means having appropriate supplements, medications, and tools at your disposal. Vitamin C, zinc, and other supplements can help fight off foreign germs. I always carry some form of medication for headache relief as well. Relief for nasal congestion is another essential if you’re like me and have trouble with ear pain in changing air pressures. Earplugs or noise-canceling headphones can aid sleep and safeguard hearing capacity in the midst of a noisy flight. They also block out the screaming babies and other travelers loudly talking on the phone. Another object I always carry is a nail file. Clippers aren’t allowed through TSA, and I often break my nails in the hustle of carrying luggage around, so a file is a finger-saver.
Snacks are another comfort aid in travel. There are some who claim it’s healthier to fast when flying, but I’m just not there yet. A 3 hour flight can turn into a 15 hour day of travel, so I always pack delicious and satiating snacks to relieve hunger pains when food is not available. Sprouted sunflower seeds, macadamia nuts, jerky, and dried fruit are some of my favorites because they’re healthy and keep blood sugar levels steady rather than spiking.
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I hope my techniques helps you improve your vacation experience by preventing and mitigating some of the pains of travel. If we can anticipate discomforts, we can take steps using my YEAH method to plan for comfort. What if every part of vacation were fun and easy because we had aligned our travel plans to indulge our preferences and maximize comfort? I’ll say, “awww yeah!” to that!
Next week, I’ll share a list of essentials that I bring on every trip to travel in comfort. That way, you can try on my foxy vacation style for yourself! However you decide to travel, I wish you safe and comfortable journeys wherever you go.
Three cheers for my lovely foxes,
“It wasn’t raining when Noah built the arc.”
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