I fly a lot.  When I do, I often have not had much sleep the night/day/week before.  Plane time is actually really good rest time for me – can’t use the laptop during takeoff and landing, anyway, so what else am I going to do?

I’ve collected tactics to make my flying space sleepable.  I always go for a window seat.  I immediately close the windows to make it as dark as possible.  The window seat also makes it possible to lean against the wall.  I used to carry a pillow – the big pillow from my bed at home – because it made flight sleep way more comfortable; it was just a pain to carry the pillow around the rest of the time.  I had a wrap-around-the-neck flight pillow, but I kept forgetting it at home, and then I lost it on a trip.  Earplugs: a must.

All of these?  Important, but not the most important.

What turns the fitful slumber of a passenger plane to the blissful, genuine sleep of kings is: the tuque (pronunciation: ‘toook’).  Canadian for: hat.

A hat.  A knit cap, winter style.  I plop it on my head just before entrance to the plane – folds up high so it’s not too warm, and oh so suave – and as soon as I get to my seat: in go the earplugs, off come my glasses, down comes the hat over the eyes, on most flights I’m asleep before takeoff and don’t wake up until we land.  I miss out on those amazing airline peanuts, but the sleep!  The sleeeeeeep!!!

Anyway, when I was in NC for SoJam last month, I met FORK! from Finland – amazing all-vocal rock act.  Great people.  I helped them with an intro to a song, and they gave me… that’s right, an amazing FORK! tuque.  Big, stylish (with a FORK! logo!  Come on!  Yea!), and best of all, dense… makes it very dark when pulled over the eyes.

On the return flight… I dreamt of Finland, and their women varied as the seasons, and their men hunting elk with an axe and bare chests.  

(you had to be there, I guess)