Hello again, dear reader. Writing to you this time from the front of a 737-900. Well, not the very front, I haven’t flown quite enough miles for them to let me up there, but I’m at least in a seat more reasonably sized than usual.

It’s another week spent driving a car I can’t tell you about for a little while yet, and so I thought I’d pass the time with a few more tips for weary travelers. We are deep into the most terrible travel time of the year, and though we’re back to having a semi-functional government, the increasingly harsh winter weather just makes travel all the more difficult, even at the best of times.

All the more reasons to protect yourself as best you can. Continuing on from part one, here are a few more tips for staying sane while on the road in increasingly insane times.

When travel disruptions occur, every second counts. It is vitally important that you be ahead of the crowd in finding another solution. If things are looking bad, if the captain just said that, surprise, you’re not taking off after all, you need to get yourself confirmed on the next flight right now.

Why? If there are only six open seats on that next flight and a half-dozen of your fellow frustrated travelers are quicker on the draw than you, congratulations, you just earned yourself a night at the most depressing airport-adjacent hotel you’ve ever seen.

As often as not, your best option when you’re going to miss a connection is to pull up your airline’s app and start tapping. If you already know your escape routes (you did read Part 1, right?), it should only take a minute or two to get yourself confirmed on another flight. That is assuming you have that app installed and you’re signed in.

But sometimes those apps won’t let you do that until you’ve officially missed your connection. In that case, you’re often better off calling and talking to a human being. Have the customer service number for the airlines you travel in your phone and ready, and make sure you’re calling from whatever number is associated with your frequent flier account so they know who you are before you start talking.

Again, every second counts if you want to spend a night at the Black Mold Suites.

If there was ever a time to treat yo’self, it’s when you’re on the road. Don’t go too crazy, because if you indulge at every airport smoothie stand you stroll by you’ll soon find those already-slender airline seats getting even more restrictive. But if there was ever a time to enjoy yourself, it’s when you have nothing to look forward to except a tight layover followed by an uncomfortable flight toward a suitably anonymous hotel.

So, make sure what you take with you is worth carrying. I’ve already shared my thoughts on why I spend too much on the bags I carry, but everything you drag through the airport with you should be something you feel good about. Splurge on the good headphones. Spend a little extra to get a laptop charger that frees up your bag. Pack the good moisturizer that’ll make your hotel room smell of lavender or lemongrass before you settle in for the night. Oh, and make sure you take along your comfiest pajamas.

Download a movie you can’t wait to see before you hop across the pond. Subscribe to Audible so that you always have something to listen to when you’re resting your eyes. Go ahead and pick up whatever’s on the top of your Nintendo Switch wish list. Try to make every moment of your awful trip as pleasant as possible, and it’ll make the time spent waiting at the airport or sitting jetlagged in your hotel just that tiny bit less miserable.

In my last list of suggestions, I said to always take the earliest flight if you can. I do, and that often means a 4am wake-up call to get to the airport in time. That means no time for the gym before my flight.

Given that, I take every opportunity to add a little extra exercise into my life. That includes taking the stairs at every possible opportunity, even the big ones, like the awful flights up to the tram at DFW that just seem to go on and on.

We’re not talking a major calorie burn, but it’s enough to get the blood pumping again after I’ve been sitting on my ass munching on Biscoff cookies for a few hours.

Speaking of sitting on my ass, I have a tendency to snap into a sort of tunnel-vision when I’m on the plane, starting at my text editor for hours on end writing whatever it is I plan to publish next -- which, by the way, is precisely what I’m doing right now.

This isn’t great for your health, particularly your eyes. Ideally, give your eyes a chance to refocus on something every 5 or 10 minutes. To remind myself, I use a program called Workrave on my PC. It just pops up a little window every so many minutes telling me to stop whatever I’m doing, look away, stretch my neck, etc.

It is, without a doubt, the most annoying piece of software on the planet, but I’ve literally been using this application for decades, and I credit it with the fact that, despite those decades of starting at computer monitors, I still don’t wear glasses.

Saving this for last because it’s perhaps the most straightforward, but also the easiest to forget. I try to always be within arm’s reach of a bottle of water when I’m traveling. Airplanes are tragically dry places, second only to Las Vegas hotel rooms in their potential to dehydrate your body and crush your soul. If you’re not proactively putting the water back in, you will start to shrivel up like a prune.

Drinking too much water on a long flight has the secondary benefit of making you get up to use the toilet all too often. This keeps the blood flowing to your legs, which can prevent blood clots. I do love killing two birds with one stone.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If one of these tips saves you a minor inconvenience in your travels, then it’ll all be worth it. Wishing you the smoothest of flights, easiest of connections, and most comfortable of seats on your next journey. Me? I’m finally done flying for the year, but I’ll soon be winging my way down to Vegas for CES. I hope to see a few of you there.