Last week, it was confirmed for me once again that it is really a very good idea to eat before flying. On Tuesday I flew to Columbus, and everything went surprisingly well. On the return trip, I flew through Chicago. I ate a couple of hours before my two hour flight to Chicago, and figured I would grab a snack during my hour layover. After landing, I headed over to my gate, where I planned to make sure everything was on time and then get a snack. But when I neared the gate, I realized that they were boarding my flight fifteen minutes early!

The gate agent said they were boarding early because we would be facing headwinds on the flight, and he wanted to get off the ground ahead of time. The plane was already half full, and I was very concerned they wouldn’t have room for my rollaboard. Luckily there was, but as I sat down, my growling stomach reminded me I never got that snack. I thought, I can handle it! It’s just a two hour flight. Except that we ended up waiting on the tarmac for about 25 minutes for documentation for some baggage, and then those headwinds made the flight almost three hours. In the middle of the flight, after pawing through my purse hoping that a snack had magically appeared, I paid for a giant cookie. It tasted good, but certainly wasn’t the best choice. By the time we landed, 30 minutes late, I was ravenous and ate a sandwich when I got home at 1am.

The moral of this story? Eat before you fly, for sure. And keep snacks on hand all the time. I had forgotten to replace my usual stash of almonds, which I ate during the trip before. It sure did lead to an uncomfortable flight! For my trip to LA tomorrow I will definitely be packing almonds, along with Dove Darks and Emergen-C, just to make sure this doesn’t happen again.