avernio.com ad: The Frequent Flyer

My husband booked a 9AM food tour for the first morning of our honeymoon in Tokyo — and only bought one ticket. “You’ll be asleep at the hotel anyway,” he said. The worst part was, after every long-haul flight we’d ever taken, he had a point. We’d been planning Japan for almost a year. Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. I had restaurants saved, tiny coffee shops bookmarked, markets I wanted to walk through, and a Notes folder that had become embarrassingly detailed. The food tour was actually my idea. Seven stops around Tsukiji. Sushi for breakfast, tamagoyaki, matcha, a little family-run place I’d read about months earlier. I’d sent him the link with: “WE HAVE TO DO THIS.” So when he sent me our final itinerary a few weeks before the wedding, I noticed something. DAY 1 — TOKYO 7:10 AM — Land 8:15 AM — Hotel / drop bags 9:00 AM — Food tour 1:00 PM — Shibuya I opened the food-tour confirmation. Guests: 1. “Why did you only book one ticket?” “Because you’re going to sleep.” I laughed because I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. “I am not sleeping through our first morning in Tokyo.” He looked at me for a second. “Okay.” That “okay” annoyed me more than if he’d argued. “I’m serious.” “I know.” “No, you don’t.” He closed his laptop. “London?” “That flight was awful.” “You slept until three.” “We landed early.” “New York?” I said nothing. “Dubai?” “That was different.” “You said you needed a two-hour nap and woke up when I was leaving for dinner.” He started laughing. I wasn’t. Because I suddenly understood what had happened. He hadn’t forgotten my ticket. He hadn’t even excluded me to be mean. He genuinely didn’t expect me to be there. And somewhere along the way, neither did I. I have never been able to sleep on planes. My husband is one of those people who can put his headphones on, lean back and disappear for five hours. I’m the person next to him rearranging the same neck pillow for the fiftieth time. I’ll finally start drifting off, my head drops forward, and my whole body jerks awake. I move the pillow. Try the window. Try the other side. Close my eyes again. Twenty minutes later, my head falls and I’m awake again. I’ve tried memory foam pillows, inflatable pillows, one of those things that wraps around your neck like a brace, melatonin, Dramamine, hoodies over my face, window seats, aisle seats. I even bought the giant inflatable thing you put on the tray table and stick your face into. None of them actually lived up to the hype. So this became our travel routine. We’d save for a trip, plan it for months, fly ten or twelve hours to get there, and my husband would walk off tired while I walked off feeling like a zombie. At the hotel I’d say, “Just give me two hours.” Two hours became four. Sometimes five. By the time I woke up, half the first day was gone. Seeing that one ticket bothered me because it made me realize my inability to sleep wasn’t just making the flight miserable anymore. We had started planning our trips around it. A few days later I was complaining about the whole thing to my older sister. She’s been a long-haul flight attendant for fourteen years, and she’s also listened to me complain about sleeping on planes for most of my adult life. When I told her my husband had only bought himself a ticket, she laughed harder than I thought was appropriate. “I’m glad you find this funny.” “No, I’m sorry. One ticket?” “Yes.” “Okay. That’s brutal.” “Thank you.” She took a sip of coffee. “But he is kind of working with the evidence you’ve given him.” “Great. Thanks.” Then she asked me what I use when I sleep on a plane. “A neck pillow.” “What happens when you actually fall asleep?” I didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean?” “Your head.” “It falls forward.” “And then?” “I wake up.” She nodded like I’d just answered my own question. “We watch people do that all night.” She said people board long flights carrying these huge memory-foam pillows, get comfortable, put their eye mask on, pull the blanket up and finally fall asleep. Then their head drops. She mimicked the little forward snap. “And they’re awake again.” I started laughing because it was exactly what I looked like. Then she said, “Your pillow is making your neck comfortable. It’s not actually keeping your head anywhere.” That sentence stayed with me. Every travel pillow I’d bought was basically a variation of the same thing. More foam. Different foam. Something under my chin. Something around the side of my neck. But when I actually relaxed enough to sleep, my head was still free to fall. “So what do you use?” She pulled out her phone. The photo she showed me looked ridiculous. It was this padded blackout thing that went over your eyes with adjustable straps that attached behind the airplane headrest. I stared at it. “You strap your head to the seat?” “Basically.” “You actually sleep like this?” “After a twelve-hour shift? Happily.” “I would look ridiculous.” “You will.” No hesitation. Then she shrugged. “Half the cabin is asleep. The other half wishes they were.” She explained that instead of wedging another pillow under your neck, you adjust the straps until your head can relax against the seat without falling every time your muscles switch off. I asked if it actually worked. She looked at me. “I wouldn’t carry it on every long flight if it didn’t.” Then she smiled. “When’s Tokyo?” “Three weeks.” “Try it before your husband gets too comfortable eating sushi without you.” I ordered one that night. At that point I’d already bought enough useless travel pillows. One more weird-looking contraption wasn’t going to change much. Three weeks later, we boarded our flight to Tokyo. Fourteen hours. Economy. After dinner, the cabin lights went down. My husband put his headphones on and I pulled it out of my bag. He looked over. “Oh my God. You actually bought it.” “Don’t.” “You’re really attaching your head to the seat?” “If you want to eat sushi alone tomorrow, keep talking.” He laughed. I put the padded part over my eyes, attached the straps behind the headrest and adjusted them. It took a couple of minutes to get the tension right. Too loose felt pointless. Too tight felt strange. Then I found the spot. My head just stayed there. No pillow jammed under my chin. No neck brace. I could actually let the weight of my head go instead of unconsciously trying to keep it balanced. I remember hearing the engines. Someone opening a bag a few rows behind us. My husband moving next to me. I remember thinking there was no chance I was actually going to sleep wearing this thing. Then someone touched my arm. I pulled the mask up. My husband was staring at me. “They’re doing snacks.” The cabin was completely dark. I looked at my phone, then at the flight map. More than four hours had passed. “How long was I asleep?” He shrugged. “Four hours? Maybe more.” “Straight?” “Yes.” “You’re lying.” He laughed. “You were OUT. I went to the bathroom twice.” I hadn’t noticed. Four hours continuously. Not forty minutes, wake up, reposition, try again. Four actual hours. I put it back on and went back to sleep. When the cabin lights came on before landing, I wasn’t magically fresh. We’d just crossed the world in an economy seat. But I also didn’t feel destroyed. My eyes weren’t burning. My neck wasn’t kinked. And for the first time after a long flight, my only thought wasn’t: get me to a bed. We landed in Tokyo just after seven. Immigration. Bags. Train. Hotel. My husband opened his suitcase while I went into the bathroom, washed my face, changed my shirt and put my hair up. When I came back out, he was looking at his phone. “You want me to bring you anything back?” “From where?” “The food tour.” I started putting my shoes on. He watched me. “What are you doing?” “Getting ready.” “For what?” I looked at him. It took him a few seconds. Then he started smiling. “No.” “Yes.” “You’re actually coming?” “You owe me a ticket.” He reminded me, very helpfully, that the tour was sold out. I told him to message them anyway. Five minutes later they replied. Someone had cancelled the night before. One spot. At 9AM, instead of lying unconscious in a hotel room like both of us had expected, I was standing beside my husband in Tokyo eating tamagoyaki. And that was the part that stuck with me. For years I’d told people, “I’m just someone who can’t sleep on planes.” Eventually my husband believed it too. So much that he stopped buying me tickets for the first morning. Turns out I wasn’t bad at sleeping on planes. I’d just spent years buying cushions for my neck when the thing waking me up was my head falling every time I relaxed. The thing my sister showed me is called Avernio. It looks a little funny. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. But it has a padded blackout section over your eyes and adjustable straps that attach behind the headrest, so when you actually fall asleep your head stays supported instead of bobbing forward and jerking you awake. My husband made fun of mine all the way to Tokyo. Guess who wanted one for the flight home. They give you 90 days to try it, which mattered to me because I’d already wasted enough money on travel pillows that eventually ended up shoved in a closet. If you’ve got a 9, 12 or 14-hour flight coming up and you’ve already accepted that you’re just “someone who can’t sleep on planes,” I’d look at this before buying another neck pillow. A few weeks after we got home, my husband started planning our next trip. He sent me the first-day itinerary. Breakfast reservation. Guests: 2.