I don’t think I am particularly susceptible to jet lag. A day or two of minor issues, and then I’m fine. Usually.

People who complain of jet lag after a three-hour time change from New York to Los Angeles or vice versa … I find that amusing. Never had a problem with that. But an 11-hour change? That’s different. Clearly.

Three of my worst jet-lag cases have come after a trip from Los Angeles to the Gulf. Actually, after all three times I have made that trip, which involves a lost night and a body clock turned upside down, I have been a mess.

I had almost no problem going west, some four weeks ago. And that trip actually took longer, 29 hours vs. 24. We left at 8:30 in the morning and arrived at nearly midnight the same calendar day, losing 11 hours off the clock in the process.

I managed to sleep fairly well that night in California, and I was out a little early the following night, maybe 10 p.m., but I was fine on Friday night. Went to a rehearsal dinner for a wedding and didn’t fall into my pasta, and never gave another thought to jet lag.

Coming back, however …

We left at 9:30 a.m. and (this is key, I think) we flew right through a night and landed here at 7:30 p.m. the next night, having gained 11 hours.

I was up until 2 a.m. (or 3 p.m., California time), went to bed and slept only four hours, leaving me to believe it was more a nap than a night’s sleep.

After working at the newspaper, I did the grocery shopping, and had everything in its place a little before 6 p.m., and decided I would rest for a bit … and woke up at 9 p.m. feeling more than a little disoriented but not really tired. I think that was my body’s idea of “night.” (Actually it was 7-10 a.m., California time, which would be a late night, yes.)

I had intended to attend a 9 p.m. press conference, but I slept right into that. I then was up until 2 a.m., again, slept for four hours again, was unable to last longer … and now we are into Day 2 of an 11-hour body clock change.

Awake from 6 a.m. forward, on a day off … laid around for three hours hoping to sleep but not being able to … then was ravenous when I got up and ate what was rather like dinner for breakfast, which was a bad sign.

Up then till 2:30 p.m. or so, when I laid down for a “nap” … and was out cold until 6 p.m.  Again, my brain treated that afternoon session like night. Meaning my “morning” began at 6 p.m. — which is 7 a.m. in California.

Again, I am groggy and discombobulated. I can get away with it, barely, because I don’t have to be anywhere or do anything right this minute.

Tomorrow, however, I have to drive to Dubai late in the UAE afternoon and go to a press conference, so this “afternoon nap” stuff isn’t going to work, even though my body may be demanding it.

Maybe Day 3 will get me back on track because my work schedule calls for it. I hope so. But my prediction is that I will be groggy, and massively so, throughout my “work” shift, and the bad part of that is … I will be driving for three hours of it.

I suppose none of this should surprise me. I went from Los Angeles to Qatar in 1993, and I was a mess for about a week, and perhaps missed a press conference or two. When I first got to Abu Dhabi, nearly two years ago, I also had significant trouble adjusting.

This “day is night and night is day” thing, with a lost night in the mix, is just slamming me. Perhaps I could have mitigated it with the right eating schedule. Or if I had been able to sleep on the plane.

More probably, it’s just a process. The wiki “jet lag” link (above) suggests that people need a day to adjust for each time zone crossed, and I just crossed 11 of them.

Hmm. Maybe having to deal with a work schedule will bring me around a bit more quickly. It had better.