Zonked

Once or twice a month I fly from Toronto to Los Angeles and (in due course) back again. And the day after my YYZ/LAX flight, I’m consistently, well, zonked. I know I should work out: swim, do some weight work in the hotel’s microscopic gym, or even run a mile or so. I have all my kit.

But I’m zonked.

Yesterday at 4 p.m. Pacific Time—only 7 p.m. in the Eastern Time Zone—I was already drooping. The partner-in-charge, also from Toronto, remained proverbially bushy-tailed and bright-eyed. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I gave into it, sort of, but made a mistake. I ordered a room-service tuna melt and fries (which, of course, I didn’t finish, but fatty comfort food, even in small quantities, is nice), and a beer (which I did finish), while I watched an On Command movie. I should’ve watched a comedy—The Wedding Crashers and The Forty-Year-Old Virgin were both on offer—but I ended up watching Flightplan, based pretty much on Roger Ebert’s review. (I actually preferred to see Transporter 2, but although it was being promoted it wasn’t on the menu.) I think a comedy would’ve been better. Flightplan is an intense, taut thriller whose only jarring notes come in the denouement (in my opinion; how does Gander, Newfoundland, become Goose Valley [presumably a confusion of Goose Bay–Happy Valley, Labrador, another waystation for long-distance flights] in mid-landing? And why is Gander/Goose Valley so well populated with FBI agents, with a single extra in an ill-fitting R.C.M.P. cap the only Canadian police official ever seen?), but it’s poor preparation for an early bedtime! I ended up staying awake until 9 p.m., and at 4 a.m. this morning I was still tired.

Nonetheless, the simple plan is: paddle about in the hotel’s outdoor pool this afternoon after my meetings (should be 24°C, plenty warm enough to be outdoors); may work out if the micro-gym has what I need; and go for a mile or so “probe run” (as my coach calls it), to see if my knee is ready to return to running.