LR sleep bus tour a daydream

This what what Hubby and I both need. An hourslong bus tour, designed specifically for those who get their best sleep while riding.

I’ve probably nattered on in this space before about how, especially as a child, I always fell asleep while riding (yet another thing to be made fun of for on the school bus!). When I did stay awake, I daydreamed.

Nowadays — as the lone driver in our household and as someone who very often has places to go — I miss the chance to just ride. And daydream while riding. And sleep while riding.

I miss it because I believe I would sleep better on a long ride than I would in my bed. Especially in light of increasing age. And menopausal symptoms. And acid reflux and mild sleep apnea and benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, necessitating sleeping on one’s right side with one’s head elevated … on pillows that not only refuse to cooperate but cause one’s lower back to act a fool.

If only I were in Hong Kong. According to a Huffpost “weird news” story posted Oct. 21, there’s now a Hong Kong bus tour designed specifically for those whose catching of Z’s is best done during long commutes.

The tour, whose bus is double-decker, covers 47 miles in five hours around the Hong Kong territory and “is meant to appeal to people who are easily lulled asleep by long rides,” according to the story by Alice Fung and Matthew Cheng.

Kenneth Kong, the marketing and business development manager of ulu travel, the organizer of the bus tours, says he got the idea for the tour from a friend’s social media post. The friend was stressed out by his job and could not sleep at night, but slept like a couple of babies when on the bus. “His post inspired us to create this tour that lets passengers just sleep on the bus,” Kong says in the article.

He even throws in a goodie bag for each passenger, eye-mask and ear plugs included.

The first tour sold out; some passengers brought their own blankets, slippers and/or travel pillows. Dang.

I’d love to see somebody around here take on this idea. Forget the Sleep Number Bed: We could have the Sleep Arkansas Bus Tour. Hop on in Little Rock, roll on up to somewhere like Fayetteville or Memphis, turn around and come back. Or just loop around the Little Rock vicinity a few times. The driver could do like the driver on the Hong Kong sleep tour does: stop at a few scenic spots so that anybody who chooses to stay awake could snap some photos.

Problem is, though, a sleep tour on Central Arkansas highways would have its disadvantages: rushhour traffic, of course. Construction zones on steroids. Bad drivers on steroids. And, sadly, the increasingly frequent wrecks.

Then there are the personal

disadvantages: Embarrassing one’s self by drooling, something I’d be afraid of doing. Or falling head- sideways over onto the shoulder of the stranger sitting next to you.

And … well, this could be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it. As a fan of the original “Twilight Zone” TV series, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the episode “A Stop at Willoughby.” In that episode, 38-year-old Gart Williams — a modern-day (well, 1960- modern) fella driven nuts by both a demanding job and a demanding spouse — would regularly fall asleep during his late- fall, snowy train commute home and dream that the train, with only him on it, had pulled up in a town called Willoughby, in July 1888.

The train porter would announce the town, inviting our man Gart to get off the train. Gart would look out longingly at the people living simpler, idyllic lives in Willoughby. When his life gets more unbearable, he decides he will indeed get off at Willoughby the next time he has the dream. Things do get worse, he has the dream, he disembarks.

In real life, he has, well, bitten the dust after jumping off the moving train. But he’s alive and well, at last, in Willoughby … which happens to be the name of the funeral home (Willoughby & Son) whose hearse carts off Williams’ body.

OK, maybe scratch that idea. We don’t want anyone sleepwalking and “getting off at Willoughby.” How about the Sleep Number folks invent a bed whose mattress gently props you up as though you were sitting and moves around, giving the sensation of riding somewhere?

Guess I’ll have to daydream about these ideas — while, sigh, driving. Next stop, email: