Ginger Ale, Outlets, and Crying: Our Travel Rituals in Roundtable Form

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!