3 ways to beat the red-eye blues - and learn something too!

Travelling is great, it’s just the getting there part that’s such a pain. And unlike George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air, I do not cherish life on the road. Long haul and red-eye journeys typically leave me tired, cranky, and frustrated with the entire travel experience. Here are three ways I’ve learned to make the process of getting from A to B a little more palatable.

A Good Book

This is the first chance you’ve had in a long time to sit down, relax, have some time to yourself (if you ignore the other 200 people crammed with you in the coach cabin), and read that great book you’ve been meaning to for months.

So leave room in your carry-on for an engrossing philosophical novel (Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov) or a creative narrative which informs our understanding of modern life (Diamond’s Collapse). Pocket sized paperbacks are preferable, but be careful if the text is too small: the cabin lights will undoubtedly be dimmed for the majority of your red-eye flight, making it difficult to read without squinting or holding the book two inches from your face.

A Bad Book

Let’s face it: the best way to overcome the boredom of a long or late-night flight is simply to sleep through it. So be sure to pack a real snoozer or three to help you drift off into dreamy bliss. If your bookshelf is only stocked up with best-selling thrillers and steamy romance, why not try a corporate team-building manual or a textbook on mathematical theories?

My favourite trick: a day or two before my flight, visit your local Borders and head directly for an unfamiliar section of the store. The further away from your own specialities, the better. Scan through for titles that would sound compelling regardless of the topic. Pick one that’s surely to put you to sleep, yet just interesting enough to capture your attention for the first 2-3 sentences. And who knows? Perhaps, months or years later, you might realise you are actually curious about the socio-economic structure of old English guilds, and — oh, what you do know? — you already have the book!

A Netbook

Enter Wikipedia, an even quicker way to delve into volumes of content on esoteric topics you really aren’t that interested in. Now is your chance to finally read up on the Guinness brewery’s family tree or the economic significance of moths, topics which, you must admit, have been on your to-read list for weeks now.

Then get in your obligatory social networking. Leave some insightful comments on your friends’ Facebook walls, and be sure to remember to re-plant your crop of avocados on Farmville. Write a blog post about the next five crazies to cross your field of vision (the airport is a great place for people watching). Have a Skype video call with your cousin stuck in an airport on the other side of the country. Make sure all your buddies on Google Talk know that you are stranded for a few hours and how horrible it is.

And when you have exhausted all of this, Twitpic a close-up shot of the gloopy, rotten airport hot dog you just bought out of sheer desperation. The more details you share of your minute-to-minute life, the more your friends and family will love you!

Okay, maybe not. But just look at how those hours flew by!

Tell me in the comments, how do you beat the red-eye blues?