If you’re trans and you use a packer or breastforms on a day to day basis, do not use them at the airport. The body scanners that the TSA uses look for variations from a “male” or “female” body, so if you have bulges where they ‘shouldn’t’ be, you will get the patdown.
signal boost this, please.
there’s a page on the TSA’s website that has tips and info specifically for trans travelers!! I can’t remember everything it has on it but one of the big things is that if you get flagged for a patdown or other screening you can have it done in private if you so request 🙂 🙂
Here is that page for reference 🙂
https://www.tsa.gov/transgender-passengers
btw the link above is broken so use this one ^
Tag: travel
Hey mom, so I’m flying to see my girlfriend this summer and I’m uh kinda a nervous flyer. Always gives me a headache and makes me feel sick and anxious. Any tips on how to make it better?
Unfortunately no. I’m also an awful flyer and get severe migraines from it, and I’ve never been able to overcome it 😦
I just wind up standing in passport control on the other side, swaying and feeling like I’m about to have a full on aura migraine/collapse.
Maybe someone else will have some handy advice though?
Sorry if this is obvious stuff, but I fly fairly frequently and have had some bad flights- I spent the last one with my head pressed against the seat in front of me and my hoodie up the entire time, lol- here is my accumulated experience, maybe some of it will be helpful:
-don’t rush on or off the plane. There’s only one or two exits, a certain number of seats, and everyone has to wait their turn, you might as well stay comfortably seated at the gate or in your seat until the line has moved.
-make sure you have water with you, and that you’re properly hydrated before the flight. Small sips can help if you feel sick or your head hurts.
-getting a good night’s sleep is also very helpful
-try not to fly hungry.
-uh, gross but true- try to give yourself time before the journey to do all your bathroom business in peace. Rushing out of the house in the morning without going number two does not help because your bowels are gonna wake up at 35,000 feet while the seatbelt light is still on.
-sucking hard on a sweet or chewing some gum can really help relieve the pain from the altitude change, and on take-off and landing. You can even just suck on your teeth, honestly.
-disposable tissues are your friend. You can blow your nose, spit into them if you have a nasty taste in your mouth, wipe your brow. Cloth tissues are ok too, actually, you just have to keep them afterwards 😛
-take a small soft pillow on the flight, or something to make it possible to rest your head comfortably. It may not seem like much but it can make a huge difference.
-comfy clothes. Don’t worry about flying dress code, that doesn’t exist anymore. If the flight is longer than a couple of hours you should wear stuff that won’t poke or scratch or restrict your breathing.
-if you like listening to audiobooks or music and it doesn’t make your headaches worse, prep something soothing and comfortable for the flight, to drown out the engine hum. Sometimes I just put on an audiobook and drift off without even listening to the words.
-always ask the flight crew for help if you need it. You can tell them as you get on the plane that you’re not feeling well and would appreciate a glass of water as soon as they can, for example, or a sick bag just in case. If you’re polite, they are usually very accommodating. I mean they should be either way but being polite makes their jobs easier.
-do not feel bad about feeling sick or being anxious. This happens to people all the time on planes. If you need to go to the bathroom and stay there for twenty minutes, that’s ok. If you need to ask the person next to you to move so you can leave your seat, that’s ok. If you don’t want to talk to them, that’s ok- you have nothing to apologise for and have no obligations to be sociable.
I just want to add that a pair of noise cancelling headphones can help a LOT. I have a cheap-ass pair and even they changed things from ‘I feel like my ears are bleeding’ to ‘I actually snoozed a bit’.
My favorite thing is that Europe is spooky because it’s old and America is spooky because it’s big
“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” –Earle Hitchner
A fave of mine was always the american tales where people freaked out because ‘someone died in this house’ and all the europeans would go ‘…Yes? That would be pretty much every house over 40 years old.’
‘…My school is older than your entire town.’
‘Sorry, you think *how far* is okay to travel for a shopping trip?’
*American looks up at the beams in a country pub* ‘Uh, this place has woodworm, isn’t that a bit unsafe?’ ‘Eh, the woodworm’s 400 years old, it’s holding those beams together.’
A few years ago when I was in college I did a summer program at Cambridge aimed specifically at Americans and Canadians, and my year it was all Americans and one Australian. We ended the program with a week in Wessex, and on the last day as we all piled onto the bus in Salisbury (or Bath? I can’t remember), the professors went to the front to warn us that we wouldn’t be making any stops unless absolutely necessary. We’re headed to Heathrow to drop off anyone flying off the same day, then back to Cambridge.
“All right, it’s going to be a long bus ride, so make sure you’re prepared for that.”
We all brace ourselves. A long bus ride? How long? We’re Americans; a long bus ride for us is a minimum of six hours with the double digits perfectly plausible. We can handle a twelve hour bus ride as long as we get a bathroom break.
The answer. “Two hours.”
Oh.
English people trying to travel around Australia and wildly underestimating distance are my favourite thing
a tour guide in France told my school group that a particular cathedral wouldn’t interest us much because “it’s not very old; only from the early 1600s”
to which we had to respond that it was still older than the oldest surviving European-style buildings in our country
China is both old and big. I had some Chinese colleagues over; we were discussing whether they wanted to see the Vasa ship (hugely expensive war ship which sank on it’s maiden voyage after 12 min). They asked if it was old, I said “not THAT old” (bearing in mind they were Chinese) “it’s from the 1500s.” To my surprise they still looked impressed, nodding enthusiatically. Then I realised I’d forgotten something: “…I mean it’s from the 1500s AFTER the birth of Christ” and they went “oh, AFTER…”.
My dad’s favorite quote from various tours in Italy was “Pay no attention to the tower – it was a [scornful tone] tenth century addition.”
Writing a historical novel means knowing how far they can travel on a horse, This is good info right here.
(via Pinterest)
Off the top of my head, it jibes with what I’ve discovered in other sources.
Queuing this with a reminder to self: add that Cartographer’s Guild thread link to this, it has more details w basically the same numbers.
… things i never did: add that link. Ahem.
Just to add re: horses re: typical 4 gaits
Walk is an average of 4mph
Trot is an average of 8mph
Canter is an average of 16-20 mph
Gallop is an average of 25-30 mphYour gallop is probably only gonna be 40 mph if a) your horse is really fit or b) your horse is built for running, a la the English Thoroughbred or the American Quarter Horse. Your horse also needs to be pretty physically fit to sustain a gallop for more than a couple of miles. Top level eventing equines, at the peak of physical fitness, only sustain a gallop for about 11 minutes/4 miles, and that’s a tremendous effort resulting from serious conditioning, and is also including going over/through various terrain and obstacles that the average horse might shy away from. If your horse hits that speed, they will need to recover immediately afterward, either through stopping, or going at the walk.
Your horse will probably be able to maintain a relatively high speed for longer if they are alternating between walking and trotting, with some cantering.
Good references for horse travel include the Pony Express, literally any cavalry program, and modern-day endurance racing.
More on horses and distance.
Message riders, including the Pony Express, would switch horses so they could run a horse to exhaustion without killing it and then grab another fresh one while a groom took care of the spent horse. Which would then do another run after it had recovered. Pony Express riders would switch horses about every 10 miles. Also, the riders were restricted to 125 pounds. Most Pony Express riders were teenaged boys. So, how far did a Pony Express rider ride in a day? About 75 miles. Still not 100. Could you do it? Probably, with multiple horses, but you’d be riding yourself beyond exhaustion and it’s more likely you’d fall off from tiredness, bluntly.
Stage coaches also used a similar system to maximize speed. A stagecoach could cover 60 to 70 miles per day. This was, by the way, the fastest way to travel in Regency England.
100 miles in a day on a single horse?
The Tevis Cup is a 100 mile race with a time limit of 24 hours. In 2016 the winning rider, Karen Donley, rode Royal Patron to the finish at Auburn at 9:48pm, having set off from Robie Park at 5:15am.
This means it took her 16.3 hours to cover the 100 mile distance on a single horse.
The Tevis Cup is the most difficult endurance ride in the world.
After such a ride, both horse and rider would be spent. They take days to recover from these rides. Days.
The horses have to be at least 8 years old to compete at the top level. They’re checked by a vet regularly, and these horses and riders train extensively.
There is absolutely no way horse and rider could cover 100 miles in a day and be fit for anything else afterwards. Furthermore, if a top race rider is taking 16 hours to do that distance, with anything quicker likely to kill the horse…
70 is more reasonable, but they’re still not going to be much use.
So, how far should you have your character travel on horseback in one day.
The answer is 20-30 miles, maybe 40 if they’re on a road in level terrain. Less if they’re having to trailblaze, use game trails, etc. That is assuming that your characters know how to ride and that their horses are in appropriate condition.
It’s also assuming you don’t have a wounded, unconscious companion tied across the saddle. Or have a pack horse. Dead weight – unconscious or dead bodies, the deer you just killed, your packs, or somebody who doesn’t know how the heck to ride slow horses down considerably.
The distances are similar, by the way, for mules.
Have I already reblogged this at some point in the past?
Eh, still important to know.
Something else that’s important to note is that, if your characters are riding in a carriage, and they’re going to be traveling nonstop, especially at a fast pace, then there is no way they’ll be using the same team of horses the entire time.
So for an added bit of realism, mention that the few pit stops they make included getting a fresh team of horses.
I already mentioned that when talking about stagecoaches, but reblogging for the added clarification.
Steel Phoenix Studios 