(Sort of-) Polyphasic Sleep, Days 30-33 – Sat-Tues, 4/8 – 4/11, 2006
Well, it has been quite a ride since arriving in LA, so I will try to bring it all together without too much fanfare. I was able to take a couple of naps on Saturday, amongst running around helping set up for the party. I had already decided I wasn’t going to try to nap during or after the party, so these were half-hearted “farewell” naps 
Knowing that I was going to be up most of the night dancing and carrying on, I decided that in this case socializing would have to take precedence over polyphasicity.
We got to the party around 10 PM, and while I won’t go into too much detail as this is really meant to be a Polyphasic Sleep blog, the party was awesome. A solid contingent came down from San Francisco to show their love for Jean, Lucas and Chloe on their collective birthdays, and Ben Chun spun a sweet set that had us dancing for hours. We didn’t get back to Venice until after 5 AM, and it wasn’t until 6 AM that we were all asleep. What followed was an impressive display of unconsciousness. I managed to sleep for 12 of the next 13 hours – that’s 4 days worth of polyphasic sleep (by metric volume)! I woke up briefly at about 1 PM for almost an hour, but then slept again til 7 PM, when it was time to go to Cal Tech for Sunday dinner. It felt GREAT! I’m not sure what it means for getting back on a hexaphasic schedule, but it made me realize I sure did miss being in bed for long periods of time, at least a little bit.
Dinner was fun at Cal Tech – DIY mexican food, messing with the hot tub, a nap actually (it was semi-interrupted, but still counts), and good company as usual. I spent a good bit of time helping a blitz-heating of the hot tub effort with Robb. Always fun to mix engineering with dinner. I decided to drive back with Jef rather than fly, and we stayed until about 2 AM and then took off north. Jef drove almost the whole way, and I managed to stay awake as we went, except for 1 half-hour nap. We switched in San Jose and I drove the last half-hour onto campus at 7:30 AM.
My naps at 8, noon, and 4 were great! I fell asleep quickly, had dreams – it was all good. I took the train back to SF and get picked up by my parents, who are in town for 9 days for Passover. We went to KFC for dinner (my dad and I both had a hankering), and I got home at 9:30. I took a nap at 10, as my 8 PM nap was kinda half-assed on the train, and then went down again back on schedule at midnight. I barely remember waking, and slept until 6 AM! Hmmm, first night back, foiled.
To cut to the chase, Tuesday was almost a mirror image of Monday – I had great naps during the day, and my 8 PM nap was so-so… I wonder if that is a consequence of going off the pattern, or of oversleeping – my earlier naps are good by my 8 PM nap is troubled, which leads to more trouble later on. After a wonderful dinner with my parents, Jef, and Kim and Doug, I headed home to try and nap again, and again had trouble. I finally went down again at midnight, but not surprisingly, again awoke at 7 AM. Double trouble.
Stephanie said,
April 13, 2006 at 6:09 pm
ahh, good to hear from ya, i was waitin for an update! knew you were busy with the fam and gettin back on track so didn’t want to bug ya about how transition was, hope wednesday was even better