It’s all fun and games…

Traveling on business and pleasure can be fun, but let’s face it: Most of the time it’s really boring and stressful. I mean, you have to get there early, get to spend an hour going through security, taking your shoes and belt off, being careful not to joke with the security dudes or accidentally say stuff like “Yes, I’m carrying a bomb!” or simply think about this amazing cartoon which would make you giggle like a lunatic as they’re running that giant swab thingy on your laptop.

So, what can you do to have some kind of fun? I’m glad you asked.

Getting to the airport

I normally take a taxi to get to the airport. You can have fun in a taxi by making stuff up about yourself and the reason you’re flying out. Think about it: Most taxi drivers are really bored anyways, so they’d rather not hear about the education conference you’re attending. Instead, tell the driver about your need to catch the red-eye to Istanbul to show your grandfather how to change the tab colors in Excel 2007 because he didn’t get it over the phone. Tell the driver you’re interviewing for a job (in your local town) through videoconferencing and that you figured you could do that from anywhere in the world so you’re flying to Paris because you really like the duck confit there. Tell the driver you have to return a defective piece of hardware to IKEA. In Sweden. The only limit is your imagination and how much of a straight face you can maintain while in the back of a cab on a dark November morning. Remember that telling a story is much more about listening then talking and you’ll be fine (and entertained).

As a bonus: When you happen to travel frequently (twice in two weeks for example like Orlando and then Denver), you might hit the jackpot and get the same taxi driver on both occasions. If that ever happen, you have to make the taxi driver’s story your story. Of course, you remember that the taxi driver told you about his time in St-Marteen on your first drive to the airport, about how he didn’t like the local beer – called the Piton because of the volcano nearby – but that at 6.8%, he didn’t mind anymore after drinking a few of those. So tell him you’re flying to St-Marteen. Tell him how much you didn’t like the local beer the first time you went there. Call the local beer the Bidon and see if he corrects you. If he says he’s been there, ask when and pretend you guys met while you were both there. The possibilities are endless!

At the Airport

After going through security, undressing and dressing again, most normal folks are now left to wait to board. So what to do during that time? Not to fear. Here’s a game LovelyWife and I invented, and you an play it too. In theory it works better if you’re traveling with someone, but I’ve been known to play the game by myself until I couldn’t stop laughing. There’s no equipment needed – you only need your sense of observation.

The game is “That person looks like”. By the way, I’m sure we didn’t invent this game, but I had not heard anyone talking about it when we first started playing.

The rules of the game are really simple. You find people who look like other people and you point them out to your traveling companion (or to yourself if you’re alone). That’s it. Of course, the game evolved since we started playing it. You see at first we’d do things like this:

Tom Cruise for reference / This guy looks like Tom Cruise!

But after a few people, the game morphed and we started doing this instead:

Tom Cruise for reference / I swear this guy looks like Tom Cruise!

And the goal quickly became “Let’s make LovelyWife look at complete strangers and laugh out loud, possibly snorting loudly”. I highly recommend you give it a try. I’m planning on adding actual pictures of people we tagged during the game, but it’s really hard to snap someone’s picture without being too obvious about it. I’m working on that.

One possible variant is that the person being told “This person looks like…” could then counter the observer’s statement with something like “That guy looks way more like George Clooney because of the haircut”. Hilarity.

On the plane

There is seriously not much you can do while you’re on the plane. I recommend a good book or two and a fully charged iPod. Of course, you could always strike up a conversation with your seat mate, but it would be really hard to keep a conversation going for an entire 4 hour flight. It’s not impossible, I know of one guy who did it…

At the hotel

Once I get to my room, I like to play “What’s the most disturbing thing that will be in the bathroom”. It’s really easy, I mentally picture the most disturbing thing that could be in the bathroom and then see if I was right. It’s not a long game, but it might have lasting effects. Here are a few disturbing things that I found in or about the bathroom:

At the Palazzo in Vegas, there was a 20” plasma screen in my bathroom. That TV couldn’t be seen while seated, so what was the point? To watch the TV while in the shower or tub?

In a few hotels, I found these:

A Coffee Maker in the bathroom? That’s wrong!

A Telephone in the bathroom? That’s even worst!

Another game I like to play is “Find that stain / Identify that stain”. I believe that in every hotel room in the world, there is at least one suspicious/weird/odd/disgusting looking stain. Hunt for it and try to identify it. For example, here’s the Denver Grand Hyatt stain:

Can you identify what it is?

As a bonus, you could make story up about the stain and how it got there. That’ll provide you with new material for the cab ride back home.