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I do this every time I go on vacation. I’ll often buy multiple new games for my phone, tablet, or other portable system, only to play it for about 15 minutes before feeling drowsy and falling asleep. Or never even start it because I know I won’t have more than 5 minutes or so before I have to help my kids with something. I also overpack on games and movies for the destination, having grand plans of sharing my favorite new stuff with my wife and family, only for everyone to be totally exhausted by the time the kids are in bed, content to watch something on netflix for half an hour before going to sleep ourselves. I’ve tried to keep all these experiences in mind and focus on packing lighter, but it’s a tough habit to break. I like having options.
I do this all the damn time! Overprepping with a fully loaded Vita, 3DS, iPhone as well as all the cables and battery packs required to keep things running for far more time than necessary.
Just yesterday I was on a train journey that was only 2 hours and yet I had over 6 hours of Dragon Ball Z Kai, Danganronpa V3 Killing Harmony (PS Vita version) and Zelda: Link’s Awakening (3DS version) ready to go.
I think it’s my anxiety issues around breaking routines that causes me to plan ahead so much. Having multiple possible distractions prepared is somehow comforting when I’m headed into the unknown. It’s annoying that I waste so much time, energy and space with all the gear, but on the plus side, at least I get a decent workout from lugging around such a heavy backpack!
I’ve been this way since I was a kid. I’d pack a gameboy or some books for a roadtrip and wind up just staring out of the window for six hours. I suppose it’s not the worst thing in the world though, to take a break from looking at a screen of some kind and just watch the people and the world around you.
I do this not only for the flight, but for the entire trip.
“Hmm, I’ll probably have several hours to myself in the evening, I should load up Steins;gate, VLR, Danganronpa and every other visual novel I’ve always meant to play on my Vita. I can probably at least knock out half of one of them.”
Cut to: it’s 7:00 PM and I am doing what I will do every night for the rest of the trip: sprawl out on the bed in my pajama pants watching a Family Feud marathon on one of the 10 channels the hotel cable actually gets while mindlessly scrolling through the same 5 webpages I scroll through every night at home.
Not only do I bring two or three portable gaming devices (3DS and Switch games have been in the rotation over the last year), I also tend to pack 3 or so novels. Even if we’re only going to be flying for upwards to an hour, I just jam in a Haruki Murakami, some 1,500 page fantasy, and The Stand because, surely, THIS is the flight where I’ll finally read The Stand.
I should say, this is on top of me also bringing my Kindle which has a year-long backlog, easy?
Aaaaaaand then I end up just doing Sudoku for 9/10 of the flight.
With how much effort Austin put into picking a singular episode of Gundam to recommend, I can’t think of anything funnier/more heartbreaking than Patrick telling Austin during the PAX pannel that actually he just took a nap on the plane.
I brought three books on this 4-day trip, like I usually do, and this time I actually finished TWO of them! Granted, I was already near the end of the first, but it’s definitely the first time I’ve cracked open more than one of the three books I always end up bringing with me. Actually finishing the majority is a new record, for sure.
oh and i watched three episodes of riverdale because im a fucking idiot
I experience the opposite of this.
I used to take a six hour bus ride to and from Pittsburgh about every 5 weeks or so for a couple of years. I’d wake up around 4:30 in the morning to catch the bus to Pittsburgh, so I’d look forward to getting some sleep on the ride. Unfortunately i usually had a very hard time getting back to sleep despite waking up so early, so I always made sure I had enough podcasts and a new game or two on my phone or netbook to get through the trip.
My hope was to take a nap, but I’d end up listening to podcasts and playing games.
For many years, my most important travel companion was my trusty burnt orange 4th-gen iPod Nano, with its whopping 16G of heavily curated music. I would pop my headphones in, turn on shuffle, and fall asleep almost as soon as the plane left the ground. Then, last year, towards the beginning of a 3-hour flight, it finally bit the dust for good. I had a rising moment of panic, because when I’m conscious on flights I tend to get pretty anxious. But then I remembered that I had optimistically packed my 3DS, and I played Pokemon until we landed.
I have a bad habit of taking approximately a million more books than I actually need to take, because I never read on vacation.
See, I used to worry I wasted time doing this, and then I got stuck with a 10 hour layover in Houston airport during the holidays at 2am.
Mostly if I’m not watching an in flight movie, I’m just on my phone to entertain myself on a long flight, so I might have a look over at toucharcade to see if there’s been anything released recently that I’ve overlooked and am interested in, but I’m not at all about bringing extra devices. I have stuff to read, music, and games on the phone which tends to be enough for the times when the in flight movies are not interesting and I’m not sleeping.
edit: it helps that I have games I “save” and only play when I’m on a lengthy trip, so, for instance, I haven’t yet completed the latest The Room game, Monument Valley 2, or Layton’s Mystery Journey.
I got myself a gaming laptop and I was psyched to use it on a flight - only to discover that the amount of juice it needs means that I inevitably can’t plug it in. Any plane that does have electric outlets inevitably has a cap on the voltage going through said outlet, and that cap takes one look at the juice that brick is trying to pull and goes “lol. nope.”
Basically I can get an hour or so of a game that isn’t pushing the processor too hard. Just enough time to jazz me up and make napping impossible!
Flew home to see my dying dad in April. 
Loaded Kindle, downloaded fic on laptop, had (newly-acquired) Professor Layton, Pokemon Silver, and Animal Crossing on New 3DS. Animal Crossing and Professor Layton were both immense comforts, as they created concentration rather than, like a book, requiring it. Played a LOT of Animal Crossing during downtime between providing emotional support and organization. Haven’t touched the 3DS since. I suspect it’ll take a little while for the association to fade.
I used to travel cross-country for business in the pre-portable era. I’d have four or five books in my backpack, plus my power-hog laptop, plus embroidery. Thank heavens for ebooks and miniaturization.
