Traveling East for the holidays? You might want to wake up earlier before you go

Are you planning a long distance trip this holiday season? Last year when I went to Georgia I made one of the longer trips a person can make and remain in the United States, flying from Anchorage Alaska to Atlanta Georgia I turned my internal clock back by a good 4 hours. ::wince::

It was not so bad when we woke up in the mid morning to afternoon, but there was one day when we woke up at I think it was like six in the morning in Georgia -- my internal clock said it was only 2 in the morning and by the time we got dressed and down to the store and were pinging around in the store for a little while my body just rebelled. I had to sit down on a relatively clear bottom shelf in the music aisle while my friends looked at CDs because I was getting nauseous from being awake and on the go so early in the morning.

If you are flying from the West coast to the East coast of the United States, or anywhere else that will throw off your internal clock like that, then you will want to do some preparing in advance. I had managed a relatively easy transition (aside from that one morning) by retraining my sleep habits for about a week ahead of departure to align more closely with the sleep times of my friend in Georgia. This allowed me to better keep up with things there despite the 4 hour change in time and let me enjoy the trip all the more.