Changing your sleep patterns - in a hurry

Like most everyone in this business, I'm up fairly late. Bedtime is usually around 2 a.m. (though I know for many others here it's far later).

My wife and I leave for vacation on Saturday morning. We've got an early (6:30) flight out of BWI, the furthest of our three major airports. Count backwards with me:

We need to be in the security line no later than 5:30. Which means we need to leave here a little before 5, at the very latest. It'll take us a good 90 minutes to get and get ready; probably more if history is any indication. So, if we feel like pushing our luck, we'll be up at 3:15.

This leaves a few options: 1. Try to go to bed early, but with the full knowledge I might not sleep a wink because I'm too excited to get out of town and that I generally wake up at 1 a.m. no matter what if I try to go to bed before midnight. 2. Take a nap Friday afternoon for as long as possible and stay up through the night. 3. Say to hell with it and don't go to bed.

Sleeping on the plane is an option and, in all likelihood, a probability. We'll also have a three-hour ride once we land to get to where we're going; sleep is a possibility there as well.

Thoughts?

 

Take a nap and stay up all night.

 

Nap Friday, then sleep on the plane the next day.

 

All nighter, dude. Staying up will fuck with your pattern less than trying to force yourself to sleep. If you can grab a nap in the afternoon leading up to it, it couldn't hurt.

 

Take a nap Friday afternoon, then get some sleep on the plane and in the car (with aid, if necessary). You'll feel hungover if you go the no-sleep route.

 

3.

 

I vote 2 or 3.

I almost always take early-morning, 6-7 a.m. flights, if I can help it, and I've given up trying to get any sleep the night before. But it works, because I'm exhausted enough to snooze on the plane, and I can plan that I'll probably have to crash early on the first night. Then I'm good to go the rest of the way, and the jet lag is out of the way.

 

I vote 3 as well. I'd rather stay up all night than get one shitty hour of sleep spread out over six hours. that's the worst.

 

One hour of sleep is the worst. Did a 15-hour drive after one hour of fitful sleep and it was awful.

 

How did you live? Seriously?

 

I agree with the consensus that you're better to stay up than sleep just a little bit.
If I am going to get less than four hours, I ALWAYS just stay up and hope I can sneak a nap in somewhere the next day.

 

I left out the best part: I had been having tension headaches every day for a month, and my head and neck were fucked up the whole time. A really miserable trip. Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.