Episode 110: Jet Lag in Paris.

Jet lag, however you get it, is awful. But when you really want to see the sites around Paris, well, you'll find a way around it. This podcast will suggest an alternative I've not yet experienced but jet lag in Paris may have a simple solution.

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Transcript

00:01 - Ed Goldman (Host)
Hi, this is Ed Goldman with the Goldman State Podcast. Like so many of you, I suffer from jet lag, but only when plane travel's involved. I added that qualifier because, as an occasional vertigo victim, I can also suffer from car lag, walk lag and turn around too fast in the bedroom lag. While jet lag may be the most irritating of these conditions, at least it's arguably normal whenever it hits me, unlike when vertigo does its thing, I don't immediately think I've grown an inoperable tumor twice the size of my head and need to get my affairs in order. I know I'll recover, by the way. Isn't that affairs in order a strange phrase? What if you found out your time was dreadfully short but you weren't currently engaged in any affairs? Would you improvise and just get all your socks matched up, or would you start hitting on married friends? Discuss while I'd flown for years, the first time I experienced jet lag was the first time I visited Europe. 

01:00
At the time, it was my first vacation after a very intense two and a half years of work, so my feeling groggy all the time seemed pretty normal comforting even but I almost passed out at a museum my first day in Paris owing to my having had no sleep, the day being extremely humid. The pervasive cigarette smoke because there were no anti-smoking laws in France yet and my discovery that Gallic art lovers found underarm deodorant a luxury but hardly a necessity. Since I had never swooned in a locker room which arguably smelled more toxic, I knew something more than aroma antitherapy was at play. Then too, when I stayed awake until 4 am my first three nights in the City of Lights, the desk clerk I sought out to see if he had any contraband sleeping pills, diagnosed my condition as simple jet lag. He demurred on providing me with drugs, on legal grounds, monsieur. Then I gave him 120 francs, which were then worth about 20 American bucks. Miraculously, those legal grounds gave way. I inhaled a pill while still in the lobby, then went back upstairs and right to sleep somewhere in the general proximity of the bed. Now this comes from the Better Health Channel, which is not, despite its name, a youth-restoring waterway. 

02:14
In Great Britain, researchers have found that on average, it takes people about one day to adjust for each 1 to 1.5 hours of time change. So if you fly from the east coast to the west coast, which is a three-hour time difference, you should be over your jet lag in two or three days, but since Paris was nine hours ahead of California back then and may still be, my watch was stopped by a court order as part of a divorce settlement more than a decade ago, it could have taken me six days to recover. Want me to work that out? That's nine hours divided by 1.5 days. Had I let nature take its course course meaning its own goddamn time. Instead, I let Donormil do its thing. Donormil is the second most popular sleeping pill in France, just a notch below the speeches of President Charles de Gaulle. 

03:03
I have a cousin who claims to suffer from such severe jet lag that she prefers traveling to the Paris-Las Vegas hotel instead of flying to Paris France. The former is a quick flight from LA, where she lives. Of note is that there's no time difference between California and Nevada, which is where they keep Las Vegas. As a result, she can go to the top of the half-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower and have no fear of nosebleeds, vertigo, nor jet lag, nor of a language barrier, culture shock or authentic French cuisine. And if she decides to take in a show, it's likely to be called the halfback of Notre Dame and offer a point spread for gamblers. My cousin tells me Paris, las Vegas, is an authentic imitation of the real city and that I really ought to visit there. I suppose I will if I find out I can score some Donormille from the desk clerk. I can't enjoy a Paris experience unless I begin it out cold. I'm Ed Goldman. My column, the Goldman State, comes out every Monday, wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe for free at GoldmanStatecom. Thanks for listening.