Argh. Day before a nice, brain-melting trip I'm starting to come down with something. Best way to ensure you come back from an auction trip a total wreck is to be sick in the middle of it.
When I read 'nice, brain-melting trip' I did not expect it to be an auction trip.
Auction trips usually involve getting up super early, making a flight, touching down, going straight to work. The day of the auction starts for us at 7am, and is usually no less than 12 hour day spent at a keyboard non-stop with an auctioneer shouting right next to you. If we're really lucky, it will go 15 hours. And then we get up again at the crack of dawn the next day to fly home.
Under the best of conditions, I come back from auctions feeling totally wiped out. If I'm sick, I'm going to want to die.
I was making a joke about drugs
If I could link you some of our recorded auction audio, "brain-melting" would make a little more sense. It's hard to explain to people what it's like. The closest I can describe is, imagine playing the twitchiest video game of your life for 12 hours or more straight. Now imagine everytime you fuck up, people notice and say something about it. Now add in the non-stop, never-ending chant of an auctioneer, that also runs for 12 hours or more straight, that becomes drilled into your subconscious to the point you hear it when you go to sleep.
By the end of it, you do kind of feel like you're on drugs. Most people have the 1000 yard stare by the time we crawl back to the hotel. Auctions are old hat for me, now, but man. Being sick makes them significantly harder to get through.