I like to think I’m pretty travel savvy. I have learned to pack (somewhat) lighter in that I don’t take nearly as many pairs of shoes as I truly desire.

I print all my contact information and tuck it neatly into my suitcase in case it is ever – God forbid – lost with all my fabulous shoes, they will be able to contact me. I have copies of all my important papers emailed to myself and in the cloud although I’m not totally sure what the cloud is but Tom assures me that it exists.

And I carefully, borderline obsessively, take Bonine when I am on any sort of moving conveyance because I have had the seasickness, the air sickness, and lo! even the train sickness and never again!

So, when we took our last, quite fabulous cruise to British Columbia, I carefully popped a Bonine before I ever set foot on the yacht. As we set sail, I felt pretty damn smug. I had planned, packed, and thought about every single tiny detail for this trip and I was just possibly the best traveler in the history of traveling.

I might possibly have been just a smidgen too smug.

Because later that night, as I sat on our bed reading a book and polishing off the last of a rather large package of chocolate covered cherries, I began to feel a wee bit squiggy. My tummy was just a teeny bit flippy floppy. After the completely horrendous experience that ensued, I finally realized that I had become complacent about my seasickness after cruising on huge ocean liners which barely moved as they crossed the mighty oceans because I was only taking one Bonine a day.

We might as well have been staying at a Holiday Inn in Bayonne, New Jersey for all the motion we felt on those ships. The Bonine pills were actually only designed to work for 12 hours and were really only a placebo for the rest of the time on the ocean liners.

The pills we had taken had worn off several hours previously.

And this was no Holiday Inn in Bayonne, New Jersey.

This was a small and quite delightfully comfortable yacht which was riding the waves like a bucking bronco.

On acid.

That was the only night we rode that bucking bronco; the rest of the week the water was as smooth as glass and just as pretty. And we had immediately picked up some of the seasickness patches and slapped them on Victoria..

But that one night was quite enough.

Tom had trustingly turned over all seasickness-related medication to me so he had also taken a pill much earlier. A pill that had also worn off hours previously. So, as I sat there with my tummy getting progressively more into quite active calisthenics, he sat up quite suddenly and announced that he did not feel good. Not at all. Then he dashed to the bathroom and proved his statement by neatly getting rid of everything he had eaten in the last 24 or possibly 48 hours.

The gut-wrenching sounds were all it took to make my stomach go from slightly squiggy to emergency emergency empty stomach contents immediately!

Luckily, I managed to wait until he was finished until I also divested myself of everything ingested anytime in the past day or week or possibly month.

Tom and I have had a lot of completely fabulous travel experiences together.

This was not one of them.

We spent the entire, long, and absolutely horrible night taking turns in the bathroom. At one point, we couldn’t take turns because it was so bad we were both in there…I leave that up to your imagination. Let me just say that we both apologized profusely to the cleaning staff the next day.

At some point, we gave up on all decorum or any attempt at giving the other person some privacy and the one sitting on the floor simply turned their head away as the one hugging the toilet made horrible and quite inhuman sounds.

We thought we were going to die.

Then we were afraid we would not die and would spend the rest of our lives in that bathroom.

Although I had eaten the chocolate covered cherries last, in some spectacularly ridiculous and quite unnatural manner, they were the last to leave my tummy.

So, whenever I think of that night – at times when we are traveling and I think nothing could get worse than what I am experiencing, I remember oh yes it can – I remember those chocolate covered cherries making a second appearance.

And that is why I will never, ever, ever, eat another one.

EVER.

Best travel advice EVAH. Take the Bonine as directed. You will be fine.