How jet lag ate me alive (tl;dr: I crawled into its mouth)
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to spend 2 weeks in Australia, just for fun. It was going to be a grand tour (well, grand for 2 weeks): a few days in Sydney, a drive up the coast to Brisbane, a few more days there, an inland drive back down to Sydney, a day on a country farm, and finally a flight home to the US.
The tower bridge, which I eventually did see on my journey
To prepare, I decided to get smart about jet lag. At the time, I had a job with very flexible hours, so I had a brilliant plan: spend the week before I left living on Australia time. This meant waking up around 4 pm, working all night, and going to bed after the sun came up in the morning. "Do this for a week," I thought, "and I won't have a lick of jet lag when the actual travel comes around!"
Did this work out well for me? I imagine you can already guess the answer.
Maybe it would have, but here's what happened as the travel day approached: My flight was departing Atlanta at 5 pm on Saturday; my last night of work was Friday. So I figured I'd get home from work early early Saturday morning, drive down to Atlanta (about 2 hours), and sleep all day on my friends' couch. Then I'd wake refreshed for the flight, and all would be beautiful.
5 am, Saturday morning. Cumulative awake time: 12 hours
What I hadn't planned for was that a very close friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while was also crashing at the same house where I planned to sleep all day in Atlanta. I arrived at the Atlanta house around 5 in the morning; by 7, all my friends were awake and getting ready to go hit the town! I wasn't sleeping well on the couch anyway, so I gave up, got up, and started hanging out.
8 am, Saturday morning. Cumulative awake time: 15 hours
There went the day that I was supposed to sleep through. We all had breakfast, we caught up, we laughed, we swapped stories, we went out to a bar to watch the Georgia Tech football game. It was lovely. It was also a death-knell to my jet lag-beating scheme.
5 pm, Saturday afternoon. Cumulative awake time: 24 hours
All in all, I was feeling fine. I had a lot of adrenaline from the past day and the upcoming adventure, so I wasn't feeling too depressed about the fact that I'd been awake for 24 hours. I boarded the flight to Los Angeles (LAX), and felt the rush of adventure coming my way.
10 pm, Saturday evening. Cumulative awake time: 29 hours
I don't sleep well on airplanes, and this flight was no exception. I landed at LAX, bought a sweatshirt (actually, I'm wearing that sweatshirt right at this very moment:
2 am, Sunday morning (eastern US time). Cumulative awake time: 33 hours
Nothing to do, I wandered around for a while in the LAX airport, and finally boarded my plane for Sydney and got underway.
4 pm, Sunday afternoon (eastern US time), 6 am, Sunday morning (Sydney time). Cumulative awake time: 47 hours
Note there that I landed in Sydney at about 6 am. I knew that if I went to bed, I'd utterly ruin my chances of adjusting to Australia time. That's my number one rule of jet lag! If it's not evening in your destination, you have to force yourself to stay awake. So I did! We went around and had a grand time, just wandering about. We went to some cliffs overlooking the ocean, we did other things, we did some additional things as well. Maybe it's becoming clear to you that my memory of that first day isn't actually too sharp...
My first view of the Australia coast!
6 am, Monday morning (eastern US time), 8 pm Sunday evening (Sydney time). Cumulative awake time: 61 hours
After a full day of sightseeing, meeting new friends, having dinner with some of them, I finally managed to find a bed and lie down. It was so beautiful. I slept and slept and slept like I hadn't slept in years. I think it was 10 am when my friend finally decided it was best for me to rise and meet the world for another day.
Those cliffs. Near Sydney. That's all I can remember.
Enjoyed your post..and that well thought out plan that almost worked. I should have tried it years ago when I went to NZ. Then again, almost got run over about 27 times once off the plane, all flight rummy and looking the "wrong way" when crossing the road. So might have made things worse...