That will be almost 16 hours of uninterrupted writing. Blog posts, my new book (due out in January, being published by Palgrave/MacMillan), emails for my newsletter… Heck, perhaps even a note to my future child (not that there’s anything in the works yet, calm down, mom…)

But there will be writing. It seems that planes are the only place lately where I can write uninterrupted, without the real world, or the Internet, or my mobile phone, or my cat distracting me. (Squirrel!) Planes are my last bastion of creativity. I’ve got a handful of new blog posts to write, including…

• A true story of how a six year relationship with a corporation ended in one hour because they chose to not bend a rule
• How I manage to eat healthy/stay somewhat fit/get my workouts in while traveling 250,000+ miles a year
• What I’ve learned from my first four months of being married, and how I can apply that to business
• Race report on Ironman 70.3 Galveston
• And a bunch of other fun pieces.

So apologies for falling down on the blog of late, but stay tuned – I’ve got some good stuff coming up! If you have any ideas for what you’d like me to write about on the return trip, leave them here – I’m happy to do it!

PS: Are you watching the Two Minute Rundown? Each weekday, Bob Knorpp and I analyze the latest in marketing, advertising, and branding, and how it impacts you, all within two minutes. Here’s the latest episode from this morning:

1) May 2012 be the year that passive aggressive status updates cease. It’d be so nice to see a status update from someone that simply says “I’m pissed off, I need to blow off some steam,” as opposed to “I wish that I lived in a world where people kept their promises and didn’t lie to get what they wanted while other people were left hoping that happens.” Passive-agressiveness helps no one. Don’t be a part of the problem.

2) May 2012 be the year that all of the self-appointed gurus, experts, and rock-stars fall off cliffs to their mangled, bloody deaths into the oceans of anonymity, thousands of feet below.

3) May 2012 be the year that the TSA either gets its shit together, or gets disbanded in favor of transportation security that’s actually effective, useful, and serves a purpose other than theater.

4) May 2012 be the year of the least amount of public information about any of the Kardashians.

5) May 2012 be the year where we all get smart enough to stop auto-linking every single niche social network to Twitter and Facebook. No one EVER needs to know that you’re ordering a mocha latte at Starbucks, or walking through the locker room at your gym.

6) May 2012 be the year that everyone becomes smart enough to realize that if the incident happens, even if there’s no one with a camera within a hundred miles, it’ll probably wind up online, and that the best way to avoid that happening is to make sure you aren’t part of the incident in the first place. This goes for anything involving alcohol, public nudity, arguments, or stuff that happens in a men’s bathroom.

7) May 2012 be the year that people learn the difference between “there,” “their,” and “they’re.”

8) May 2012 be the year that people stop using “password” as their password.

9) May 2012 be the year that people stop reacting to emails, posts, or tweets that purportedly comes from a friend, yet doesn’t seem to be written in the same language they normally use, and usually has a link that ends in .ru.

10) May 2012 be the year I learn to be a better listener .

11) May 2012 be the year that United Airlines puts flat-bed seats on their EWR-LAX run.

12) May 2012 be the year that I exceed 2011′s number of speaking and consulting gigs.

13) May 2012 be the year that HARO breaks over 1,000,000 users.

14) May 2012 be the year that DailyWorth, SnapGoods, Namely, Trippy, ScotteVest, Right Next Door, Pixability, and all the companies in whom I’ve invested and for whom I advise break out into the mainstream and earn a ton of money.

15) May 2012 be the year NASA the Wondercat gets a new brother or sister

16) May 2012 be the year more of us learn the value and pure joy in volunteering, donating, or helping others.

17) May 2012 be the year I have an incredibly great Ironman NYC, but may it also be the year that I stay HEALTHY, and don’t obsess over my weight, every bite of food I eat, or what morsel contains how many calories.

18) May 2012 be the year I finally take a honeymoon with my new wife.

19) May 2012 be the year that the world becomes a better place because of something each of us has done during it.

20) May 2012 finally be a year of peace, happiness, love, and prosperity for all of us.

Happy New Year, my friends. Thank you for being here.

With that, I offer these ten tips as a way to get out of town painlessly this holiday, whether you’re going to Grandma’s, back home, or to an island off the coast of Portugal.

These tips work. Trust me. I travel close to 250,000 miles per year on Unitinental Airlines. (My name for the Continental/United merger.) As such, these are things I do daily. Use them. They work.

11) The flight is not the time to be cheap, if you can afford not to be. Yes, it’s great to get a flight for $60 each way from NYC to LA. But know this: You’ll board last, you’ll be charged for everything, and you’ll probably wind up being miserable enough to make that $120 r/t fare cost you hundreds more. If you can afford it, pony up for economy plus or similar, at the least. It’s worth it, and usually have enough perks (first bag free, earlier boarding, more legroom) to make it the price worth it. Besides – ask yourself: How much are you really worth? Enough to be cramped for six hours, or enough to have some room, be able to get some work done, and have a drink?

10) Book the first flight out in the morning. Yes, it sucks to get up at 3am to make a 5:45am flight. But it’s worth it for the following reasons: First flights out are the ones that are usually the most on time. There’s nothing blocking them, the planes are usually already at the gate from the night before, and the skies are the least crowded. Chances are, you’ll get out on time, and make any connections you need to make. The later in the day your flight, the more of a chance of a delay, a missed connection, and one less day of actual “rest.” Bonus: Getting to the airport at 4:30am for a 6am flight means hardly any TSA lines.

9) Hubs are your friends. If you live in a city without an airport hub, your flight choices are limited, at best. Airports like Newark, which is like, 90% Unitinental, have multiple flights to the same destination over the course of the day. If you miss one, you have a better chance of getting the next one. If you live in Boston, for example, an airport without a “home” airline, it could pay to leave the night before, take Amtrak to NYC, have dinner with friends, and fly out first thing the next morning. More options equals less chance for delays or cancellations that affect you.

8) Look for alternate security lines. You know how buses, car rental shuttles, and cabs all seem to go to the same place? Chances are, the thousands of people they’re dropping off will just move like sheep from the curb to the ticket counter to the TSA line, without questioning anything. I like to walk to one end of the terminal or the other – More often than not, there’s another security line there, with much, much fewer people there.

7) When everyone is elite, no one is elite. At some hub airports, they have special checkpoints for elite travelers. The problem is, as any elite traveler will tell you, at those hubs, almost everyone there is elite, and the people who aren’t are crowding the lanes because they don’t know they’re not allowed to use them. Chances are, the non-elite TSA checkpoints will actually move faster, if they’re separate checkpoints. If they’re three LINES, and one is elite, get on the elite line. But if it’s an entirely separate checkpoint, you might do better in a regular lane.

6) A coin is metal, as is a cell phone, jewelry, and your business card holder. Be smart. Put everything you have into your jacket pocket, and put the entire jacket through the x-ray. This includes your belt. You’re allowed to take it off before you get to the security line, you know. The less you’re wearing on your person, the less likely Joe-TSA is going to direct you to the Anal-Probe corner.

5) Don’t check bags. If you’re going to California for ten days, yes, it’s understandable that you’ll need a suitcase. But guess what? It’s not a requirement that you travel with it! If you use FedEx ground a week before your flight, not only will your entire suitcase be waiting for you when you get to the hotel, and not only will you be out of the airport, on average, 30 minutes before those checking luggage, but with the fees that most airlines are charging for checked bags, using FedEx ground will actually save you a decent amount of cash! Just don’t check bags. It’s not worth it. I’m a huge fan (and on the board of) the ScotteVest. I’ve actually traveled to Asia for four days with nothing more than my vest holding everything I could possibly need.

4) Being a dick will NOT get you a better ANYTHING. A note about gate agents: They’ve heard it all, and they’ve been abused worse than Michael Vick’s childhood pet. There’s nothing you can say to them, no way you can threaten them, that will make them help you. BUT – Being nice, understanding that the holiday season brings out the newbie travelers which they can’t stand, can go a long, long way. Nod knowingly. Smile. Heck, bring chocolate. Gate agents have the power to make your next six hours a ride in a limo, or the equivalent to being kidnapped in Kandahar. BE NICE. It’s beyond amazing what being nice can get you. In general, this rule goes for life, as well.

3) For God’s Sake, board when called, and not before. I can’t TELL you how many times I’ve been ready to board, and they start with First Class and Top Tier elite. I then have to push past 100 idiots who are sitting in 34-K, but figure “Hey, if I’m close, I can get on first.” NO, YOU CAN’T. What will happen is you’ll block everyone else, make the flight board late, and possibly cause us to miss our wheels-up window, potentially delaying us for hours. If you do this, those who WERE in the right place at the start of boarding will KILL you, and it’s totally allowed. Yes, it sucks to not have overhead space because you boarded last. But you could have chosen a seat closer to the front. And besides, if you listened to me in tip 5, that won’t be a problem anyway.

2) When you land at your destination, and you’re walking out of the plane, compliment the pilot on a good landing. The landing is the one thing that has the least amount of computer control – it’s pretty much all-pilot. You want to make a pilot happy? Compliment him or her on what they actually did, as opposed to complimenting them on a good flight, which just means that the auto-pilot computer wasn’t running Windows XP.

1) Lastly, give yourself tons of extra time – Download some good apps, good books, or good magazines. Bring them, and know that shit happens. Don’t look for people to blame, don’t post to Twitter how much something sucks and how inconvenienced you are. You’re not alone, you’re not the only one to whom this is happening, and contrary to popular belief, it’s not in an airline’s best interest to not get you to your destination on time. They’re not doing this on purpose. Smile, know that things might go wrong, and try not to be “that guy” that bitches and complains, and without fail, gets recorded and sent to YouTube under the tag “douche.”

Happy flying, and happy holidays, my friends.

Any other tips? Leave them below – I’ll give a discount code for any ScotteVest product to the best one.

The flawed logic of these massively misguided protest organizers is that if everyone does it, it’ll slow down security lines across the country, resulting in massive flight delays, and “will show the government that we object.”

Holy crap on a stick, the end of days is coming – I’m actually leaning towards siding with the TSA on this one.

Sort of.

First off, let’s establish a few ground rules.

a) The TSA is security theater, primarily designed to give a massive “show” of security. Frisking an 89-year-old grandmother of nine? A six-year-old child? PILOTS, who have the ability to bring down the damn airplane in the first place? Keeping us safe from Shampoo since 2004, I really don’t believe that the TSA has ever done anything to effect change on our nation’s skies. Another attack like 9/11 hasn’t happened because another attack like 9/11 hasn’t happened. The TSA has nothing to do with it.

b) The amount of inconsistency and bureaucracy within the TSA astounds even me. This is the agency who spent 20 minutes arguing with me because I didn’t open my iPad. (It’s an IPAD. It doesn’t OPEN.) The same geniuses who’ve decided that I have to take my conditioner in film-canister-size jars, have never, even ONCE, stopped me with the Hook Knife that’s attached to my sport parachute. Don’t even get me started about the time they opened my carry-on to examine it, and managed to leave one of their hand-held magnetometers inside.

So yes – The TSA is primarily for show, and the fact that no other planes have crashed into buildings is a product of fortunate happenstance, and alert passengers, ready to kill anyone who does something stupid in-flight. (See how the shoe-bomber was brought down.)

But… With that said, let’s look at what these opt-out geniuses are doing by their idiotic “opt-out day” plans.

1) They’re holding “opt-out day” on the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the year. Their logic: “Let’s disrupt travel for tens of thousands of Americans, who will get so pissed off, that they’ll write to their congressmen and have the backscatter technology repealed!

But here’s the problem – THAT WON’T HAPPEN. The busiest travel day of the year? It’s less than 5% of the people who travel during the rest of the year! We’re all smart enough to know NOT to travel on the day before Thanksgiving! By inconveniencing Mom, Dad, and little Joey, you’re NOT getting the people who could actually effect change involved – You think that Mom and Dad are going to give a damn the day after they get home?! No! They’re going to think that you people are morons for delaying their Thanksgiving dinner with Grandma. Well done. Way to back your cause. Want to really effect change? Target the people who actually pay the airline’s bills – Hold “opt-out day” on a random Thursday in February, when all the business travelers are trying to get home. That might do something. Or, you just might piss off a few hundred thousand business travelers. I’m going with the pissing-us-off option.

2) Drama much? Let’s blow apart the myths of the Backscatter technology on which these opt-out fools are basing their entire premise:

a) It’s tons of radiation that will mutate my genes and turn me into a combination of Tom Arnold and Janet Napolitano!

a1) No it’s not. That’s called “sounds good for the TV cameras.” If you travel once a week, you’re getting tons more radiation on the flight across the country than you ever could from a Backscatter scan. You’d literally have to take 150 scans in a ROW to equal one cross-country flight. As far as I’m concerned, pilots should be exempt from Backscatter – They’re the ones who actually do that much flying – and as I said before, they’re the ones already with the power to crash the plane. An X-Ray is going to help prevent them taking the yoke of the plane and pushing “Down?” But the rest of us? Even four times a week for an entire year is equal to less than two cross-country flights. Come on, really? This is worth freaking out about? Get real.

b) It’s a naked photo of me! Oh my God! No one should see my cottage-cheese thighs but my husband/No one should see my pot-belly and man-boobs but the woman stupid enough to marry me!

b1) Let’s take a look at a Backscatter scan:

Ooh. Do me, X-ray-woman.

Stefan Pinto - @stefanpinto - Business Show Host

All the people running around calling Backscatter scane “nude photos” are, sorry to say, idiots. This isn’t a nude photo. This is an x-ray at best. I personally like to think, as I’m walking through the machine, that the x-ray tech, a few hundred feet away, is sitting there, looking at me, and when she gets to my crotch, goes “Damn! That’s fine!” But hey, that’s my little fantasy, just like the “opt-out” people have theirs.

c) Opting out of the scan means an invasive pat-down.

c1) Yes. This is true. Don’t want some idiot who last week was working at Jiffy Lube and this week is a TSO copping a feel? Walk through the damn scanner. You’ll be back to grabbing your three slices of pizza from Sbarro’s as you make your way to the gate much quicker, and no one has to touch you. Are the pat-downs invasive? Yes – No doubt. But that leads us to our final point:

d) IN THE UNITED STATES, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO FLY. According to some guy named Kendall Clark, who made use of his constitutional right to Tweet by calling me an idiot, apparently my wording here is incorrect. Apparently, citizens do have the right to fly. i guess that also means they have the right to safety, thus, my statement below still stands. Thank you, Kendall Clark, for correcting me. Although I do believe that your calling me an idiot was uncalled for. But hey, that’s the beauty of this country, right? (And yes, I called people idiots above – But no one was personally called out. So that should save me about 50 unneeded comments below.)

BTW – Kendall – It’s not an “ego bot” – It’s a smart use of social media. I would say that if you have a blog and you’re not keeping up on what people are saying about you, then you’re an i… You’re not making the best use of the tools around you. :)

No where in the US constitution does it say “You have the right to walk onto a plane without being searched for dangerous weapons that could kill hundreds of people.” Unreasonable search protection doesn’t apply here, because (wait for it, this is gonna be good,) YOU DON’T HAVE TO FLY! You could do what stoned college kids who want to transport their pot home for Christmas do every year, and take a Greyhound bus, or an Amtrak! You could rent a car! You could bike ride across the country, or take a ship to Europe. This isn’t a legal issue, nor a constitutional one. Don’t want to go through a Backscatter machine? Don’t fly, the same way that if you don’t want to have the 0.0001% chance of having your bag searched, don’t take the NYC Subway. Doesn’t stop millions of people from taking the NYC Subway each week, though!

Do me a favor – If you’re traveling next Wednesday, and you happen to see a Backscatter machine, don’t be stupid. Don’t opt-out, then complain when you get felt up. Take the five seconds, walk through the machine, and be done with it.

You really want to affect change? Do it with your pen, your email, your vote. But to hold up Mom, Dad, and Joey to prove some stupid point you’re not going to be able to do anything with in the first place? That makes you as bad as the policies you’re supposedly trying to change.

Happy Thanksgiving, and safe travels.

Peter Shankman
200k+ mile per year flyer