Tip 1. Wake up late.

To experience a quick-brain-scattering-rush this how-to tip should be taken up first. This is best experienced when you’ve thought you had set the alarm the night before, but wake up to find out you’re thirty minutes past the set time. This gives you an opportunity to curse technology and the now-banal-once-reliable alarm clock you’ve rested your entire journey on. This how-to travel tip offers stubbed toes and surprise scratches you attained as you run around your place and out the door. This will give you super OCD for the next trip around; checking the alarm clock(s) 5-10 times before getting to sleep.

Tip 2. Drink too much at farewell party.

Responsibility and a good time seem to clash at these chin-digs. Granted, you will have a drink. “One drink because,” as you like to say and think is the right thing to say and do, “I won’t make it in the morning if I have more than one.” Minutes pass and now you’re downing your third tequila shot with the starry-eyed enchanter that is so enthralled on how you’ll be going to Cambodia for three months and he/she wants you to email him/her your daily adventures of your trip. You’ll stay up the entire night, most likely, drunk and infatuated. This step offers a great feeling of regret or a rewarding retrospective smile if you are forced to wake up that starry-eyed enchanter from your bed to get the hell out.

Side note: Doesn’t necessarily have to be a farewell party. It can be at the bar/club with friends, 7/11 with high school friend, in a canoe with your lover or alone in the kitchen of your studio.

Tip 3. Traffic.

A worn-out excuse but a common one. It’s one of the best ways to utilize your vulgar vocab and a perfect time to get in touch with your quiet rage (it misses you, say hi to it once in awhile). Best time to book a flight would be during rush-hour, and remember to leave your home about 30-40 minutes prior to flight time – the goal is to get on stand by.

Tip 4. Leave packing to the very last moment.

Yes, we all hate to pack, well let me take that back, some enjoy the ritual of displaying their items on a table to gain a tactical vantage point, allowing them to shed, dismiss, and edit items. But for others that rely on procrastination, packing is not a priority, and it’s highly over-rated. You’ll feel much better running around the house looking for clothes and discovering your favorite shirt hasn’t been washed. It adds to the suspense of what might unfold in your future travels.

Tip 5. Get arrested.

If you have any unpaid parking tickets (exceeding 15), a warrant, or on the run, make sure you draw attention to yourself in a public place where security guards and police are stationed. This is probably the best way to be held back on your trip. Plus, if you get detained overnight you are treated with free food – this trip is looking brighter already and you’ll have a hell of a travel story to tell your friends.

Tip 6. Get into a fight.

Bump into the wrong person while you’re scurrying around Walgreens for the last “travel” product, and confront this person with your bottled stress. React and explode. The best way to get held back is always a good fight with a perfect stranger. Bruises look cool – a possible tool for picking up dates once you get to your destination…of course when in stand by there are many possibilities to chat it up with the ladies or gals; you have nothing but time, go crazy tell’em what happened.

Tip 7. Guilt.

It’s one of those items that seem to magically appear in your suitcase. Five thirty in the morning and you can’t sleep. You’re leaving for a month without your newly acquired girlfriend/boyfriend. It makes you ponder on his/her feelings, future decisions, and thoughts that might be running in his/her head about you. So you run to her/him and spew insanely amount of love words and gut wrenching heart-exploring truths on how you feel that make the moon, the stars, the little deer and the rabbits glow in rhythmic sync to your vomit stream. You do it for so long that you inadvertently miss the flight, leave your passport at home, and forget your insulin…

Tip 8. Unfinished responsibilities.

Work, pet chores, house chores, bills, children…these inconveniences can be a very rewarding obstacle to get over. Leave anything that can be done at the last moment to the very last moment before your trip. For example: if the kids are not going with you ask the relative that will take care of them (uncle, grandmother, aunt, etc.) a day before or even the morning of the trip. If no relatives are available call up a stranger; this will provide you with trust building skills, but you’ll have time to choose the right person, once more, there’s nothing but time when you miss a flight – sweet stand by!

Tip 9. Bowel movements.

One of my favorites. You need to go so bad that you drop everything just to alleviate yourself, but you know in your head you shouldn’t and that you can hold it until you get to the plane but you just have to give in. It’s one of those “you’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t” kinda things. Make it more adventurous and load up with lemon-lime flavored magnesium citrate. Let the Super-Ego take over…

Tip 10. Forget your travel documents in drawer.

I always like to leave my passport and other identification cards separate from my luggage. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the exciting trek I’m about to take. Imagine for a second: You’re happy, enjoying the moment in the check-in line, everything feels good, and you’re going to have fun. You walk up to the nice lady checking in bags. She asks you for a passport, and you go into that front pocket department of your bag and find…nothing. Here is when you gain that uncannily ability to visualize your room, the drawer and the passport that rests inside, brimming with potential to identify who you are and where you come from. This step is an exercise of memory and atonement.

Tip 11. Mistake departure time, date and/or airline.

It’s not a step that you can consciously do, but it’s one that you can prepare for. Book your flight months before (6-8) and forget about it. Tell friends and family that you’re going to France in the summer, and leave it like that. Specifics are not needed. Bury your confirmation email in some hard to reach folder in your inbox. Just remember the date of the flight and either if it’s in the morning or evening. This step offers confusion, frustration and a radiating blank complexion – think it over in stand by box.

Tip 12. Rely on others to get you there.

You get high with a little help from your friends, and on occasions really pissed off. It’s a step in refining your communicative skills to relay how you feel about your friend’s reliability. It’s a friendship breaker and a life-changing epiphany inducer, possibly for both parties. The task in picking you up should fall on a friend that arrives late all the time and is almost a complete screw-up in life.

These travel steps will provide you with wonders of enjoyment even before you set foot on the plane. It will be sure to take you to levels you’ve never reached before. Follow them and you will be glad you have.

Photos: M Carmen G F, FunResearcher

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