27 hours

[Clocker]

Well, I've been going for about 26 hours now. About 9 hours has been spent commuting to and from one of our plants in OH. The rest of the time has been speent working at them plant or entertaining gyests and drinking large abount s of sangria at home. Anybody have any interesting stories about the longest time they hgave been up and what happened? I'm now fighting to stay away 30 hours behoe i go to sleep...

CLocker

 

[P5-133XL]

96+ continuous hours: I was running a gaming convention. After a while one simply goes numb with tunnel vision the norm and the only thing keeping ones self awake is the specific immediate task in-front of you. Multi-taking becomes impossible. those tasks become a driving force. If at any time there is a gap in the series of tasks you need to perform you'll fall asleep immediately.

 

[Clocker]

Whoa I'm not sure what you jus t said but it iseem pretty heavy/

F-it. I' gptt a; gp tp bed/

96 hours is a logn freking time. I'd shoot someone befhrpre I got there..

Gnight

C

 

[jtr1962]

~81 hours during a busy week in college. I got up Monday at maybe 8 or 9. Between studying for tests plus other assorted deadlines I didn't get to bed until around dinner time on Thursday. I slept for about 12 hours after that but felt fine otherwise.

I do go for 24+ hours straight now and then when I get work, mostly just because I want to get it out of the way. I did 50 hours straight this past January when my friend needed a bunch of SOS light controllers made in a hurry. Normally if I keep it under 36 hours at a time I'm pretty much fine with eight or nine hours sleep afterwards. In fact, unless I'm very tired I don't sleep much over 6 hours these days. I prefer to take two or three shorter catnaps of a few hours instead. It's a really hard for your body to get going again after it's been idle seven or eight hours.

 

[P5-133XL]

Also large amounts of continuous sugar ingestion helps a lot.

 

[Fushigi]

I bow to your collective greatness. My record is a mere 36 or 40 hours; don't quite remember. But what I can do quite easily for several days straight is get by with under 3 hours sleep a night.

I've got an internal alarm clock that'll wake me up within a half hour of my normal time regardless of when I go to bed. I normally get up around 5. If I stay up until 3:30, I'll probably still be up before 6. I'll be moving a little slow for a bit but then everything will be normal again.

My typical night is 6 - 6.5 hours of sleep. 7+ is rare and feels like too much. 5.5-6 is still fine, but if I get between 4-5.5 it for some reason isn't restful. I do better to get less than 4 than, say, 4.5 hours.

Also, if I wake up and it's light outside, I'm up. I can't go back to sleep. For what is probably a similar reason I rarely nap during the day.

 

[CityK]

When I've been awake for over 24hrs, I find that in the morning I get a feeling of numbness in my limbs and reduced peripheral vision. However, these are usually short lived and everything returns to normal - especially if I chug a coffee or two - and I function quite well up until just after nightfall, at which point I start yawning like mad. At this point, I usually like to call it quits, as unless I have an overwhelming need to bring something to a immediate conclusion within the next 24 hours, my efforts are much better servered by getting some sleep.

 

[Clocker]

I just got out of bed. The pounding in my head right now tells me that I probably could have stayed awake a lot longer if I didn't drown in pitcher of sangria.

However, I don't think I could ever match 80 or 96 hours! That's N U T S !!

 

[Buck]

Pounding headache - your blood vessels are dilated, drink caffeine and take an anti-inflammatory like Ibuprofen. Also, you still need sugar; the easiest way is honey on a cracker. It’s also the least intrusive on your stomach if it is a bit upset.

 

[Pradeep]

I did 14 hours on Tuesday, 22 hours this Wednesday/Thursday AM, home for 12, then another 12 hours yesterday. Had a batch of work that had to be out by yesterday evening. Taking a day's rest today, then back to work Sunday and Monday for another deadline. Can't say no to OT time, I'm greedy

 

[sechs]

When I was in college, there was one class for which a friend and I would always "study" all night before the tests, and then go on to our normal classes. Usually ended up being more than 40 hours.

I also pulled a 36-hour work shift once when I was testing at EA. Not a lot of work got done after two in the morning, but I was making double time!

 

[jtr1962]

In addition to the sugar and caffeine already mentioned, another thing that helps you keep awake and alert for long periods is very bright lighting. I find I'm able to go much longer stretches without fatigue that way. The bright lights tell your body that it's still daytime, no need to sleep. :mrgrn: However, the minute you get in a darkened room your body tells you it's time to sleep.

 

[Mercutio]

I had a 77 hour "weekend" once. All billable, even.
I was a subcontractor for a major network management job that ran through IBM Global services. It was one of those thing where, looking back, you say "How the hell did *I* get involved in this?"

I was asked, shortly after the beginning of my time on the job, to write a "simple" script to install Netware 4 on a PC.
OK. Fine.

In an organization employing at LEAST 40 CNEs, I was the guy that got assigned this job. At the time I think I was 20 years old, had no appreciable netware experience, and nominally, the reason I was hired was to deploy new PCs to employee desktops (I batch-scripted a data tranfer process that cut the deployment time from six hours to about 15 minutes, thereby freeing me up for all kinds of stupid little jobs).

After a couple days, the scope of my project got upped to "install OR upgrade a functioning Netware 3 server". Without human interaction.

So in between futzing with some Sun machines that were nominally my responsibility, I installed/upgraded Netware about 100 times on the various server hardware I could get my hands on.

I *thought* my script would pass off to someone senior to me to be reviewed/tested/whatever.

Nope. One Friday afternoon they came and told me it was time for an enterprise-wide change and oh-by-the-way can you stay late tonight?

The good news was that my script worked for 364 of the 382 servers.

The bad news was, there were only three people on the IT staff who had installed Netware 4 before and the other servers were each their own nightmare of misconfiguration (and this in the days before anyone put support stuff on the internet!)

We finally finished up Monday afternoon. My boss (who had been OUT OF TOWN through the whole thing) put me up in a really nice hotel and told me he didn't want to see me until Wednesday morning.

 

[ddrueding]

I've pulled some crazy ones in the past, but this coming Wednesday is the one I'm worrying about. I'll be getting up at 7AM for a meeting, working until 6PM doing my day job, then working until midnight at the game center.

That's my normal day, no big deal.

Immediatly after getting off at midnight, I'm driving 617 miles to Eugene, Oregon. I figure I'll get there sometime around 10AM. Normally this kind of 27 hour day wouldn't bug me, but the 10-hour drive at the end has me worried.

 

[sechs]

Make sure that your insurance premiums and will are up to date....

 

[Fushigi]

617 miles @ 60MPH = 10.3 hours. @ 70 = 8.8 hours. @ 75 = 8.2 hours. + time for gas refills, bathroom, and food.

Clearly, IF you can safely and legally (wink) do 75, you can save 2 hours on the trip. Also try to minimize your stops; hit the can and get a fresh cup of coffee whenever you fill up on gas.

 

[Pradeep]

Immediatly after getting off at midnight, I'm driving 617 miles to Eugene, Oregon. I figure I'll get there sometime around 10AM. Normally this kind of 27 hour day wouldn't bug me, but the 10-hour drive at the end has me worried.

Where shall we send the flowers? In seriousness driving faster would help keep you awake, as it's pretty easy to nod off on a straight highway at 65. Hopefully it's an interesting road.

 

[Buck]

The bright lights tell your body that it's still daytime, no need to sleep. :mrgrn: However, the minute you get in a darkened room your body tells you it's time to sleep.

The bright lights are hard to handle after several drinks.

 

[sechs]

In seriousness driving faster would help keep you awake

It's also much easier to get into an accident, as your mind is less able to cope with the world zipping past it.

 

[ddrueding]

Unfortunatly, 90% of the trip will be on I-5. Super-straight for the first 6 hours, then the last 3 are through high passes and is quite curvy. There's also a significant amount of road construction going on....yup, I'm screwed.

It's amazing what love will do to you.

 

[ddrueding]

617 miles @ 60MPH = 10.3 hours. @ 70 = 8.8 hours. @ 75 = 8.2 hours. + time for gas refills, bathroom, and food.

Fortunatly, a majority of the distance is a 70MPH speed limit; and at 75 I'll be passed by semis regularly. A good thing considering I can't afford to get pulled over for anything.

 

[Mercutio]

Surely it would be easier and safer to purchase a plane ticket?

 

[ddrueding]

It would be, except for the logistics of the situation:

The closest to a "direct" flight involves driving an hour to San Jose, then flying to Portland, then transferring to another flight To Eugene. After I get there I would have to rent a car (we plan on going camping) but wait....I'm not 25 yet, so renting a car is neigh impossible.

The flight/rental combo (including drive, parking, rental, etc) would cost nearly $400 and still take 5 hours. Not to mention the fact that I'm scheduling my departure/arrival times to maximize my time up there. The drive will cost approx. $80 in gas round trip.

 

[Santilli]

DD:
Be careful. Most don't understand that Kalifornia air travel has become so screwed up that a flight to LA, with security wait, is the same as driving it.

Don't do the drive. Figure something else out, or have a plan to stop at a hotel you know when you start to pass out.

Have someone cover your shift, or do lot's of caffine. I have found that high speeds do make I-5 less boring, or, better, drive the coast, or 101, so that you can get out of the boredom.


I did do a high speed trip to IIRC, the Imperial Dragon, or something like that, run by Richard Wing, in Hanford, Kalifornia. I was late for a 150 dollar a plate dinner, and averaged 120. That was long ago, and a time when high speed, first offense didn't put you in jail. I found the speed made me concentrate. Please, figure something else out...
s

 

[The JoJo]

Hmm, something like 36+ hours is my best.
Starting at about 7am testing, then the next morning at about 4am home for change of clothing and then directly to give some training so some intructors about the software I had tested the whole night.

 

[ddrueding]

Guys, I really appreciate your concern. For the record, I do have some experience doing drives like this, and am pretty good with a mummy bag and a rest stop. I'm also going to see I can bag a nap from around 2PM-6PM, should help quite a bit.

My truck driving buddies assure me that for the real long trips, just drink apple juice. No caffine, no candy. We'll see; I'll start with that, but will have a case of red bull and a bunch of peanut butter cliff bars just in case. I also have a number of friends that have volunteered to chat with me while I drive through the night. Good people.

 

[The JoJo]

Please try to get a nap before you drive. What you're about to do sounds VERY risky to me.

 

[Santilli]

5 has nearly put me to sleep. I NEVER drive it, for that reason, if possible.
Too boring.

101 I like, and, from your neck of the woods, I'll drive 1 to LA, and enjoy it more. North of SF that's not practical...

s

 

[Santilli]

5 has nearly put me to sleep. I NEVER drive it, for that reason, if possible.
Too boring.

101 I like, and, from your neck of the woods, I'll drive 1 to LA, and enjoy it more. North of SF that's not practical...

s

 

[jtr1962]

Driving fast certainly will help you keep awake, but given the amount of hours you'll already be up your reflexes won't be as fast should something get in your way. 75mph will put you to sleep for sure. That's one reason I never had any interest at all in driving-even with plenty of sleep the low speed limits in this country would cause me to fall asleep behind the wheel. Having ridden with my brother quite a few times at various speeds, I can honestly say that anything less than about 110 mph on most Interstates would be problematic for me. Since this was exactly twice the speed limit at the time I would have gotten my license, I though it best to just avoid driving altogether. Probably wouldn't have had a license for very long anyway-either it would have been revoked for driving at double the limit, or I would have fallen asleep behind the wheel and killed someone.

 

[sechs]

Stupid California car culture!

 

[NRG = mc²]

I've been up I think around 50 hours or so. Towards the end I would laugh uncontrollably at the most trivial of things, feel extremely hungry, shiver for no reason and have some mild hallucinations. And to think some pay big dollars for drugs to do that to them.

 

[LunarMist]

Driving fast certainly will help you keep awake, but given the amount of hours you'll already be up your reflexes won't be as fast should something get in your way. 75mph will put you to sleep for sure. That's one reason I never had any interest at all in driving-even with plenty of sleep the low speed limits in this country would cause me to fall asleep behind the wheel.

Have you ever driven at high speeds for hundreds of km at a stretch? At 230-250 km/hr. one is alert at first, but after a few hours the same stresses that cause alertness cause one to tire and drive in a dangerous haze. Making poor judgements and/or falling asleep at those speeds can easily spell disaster. Even with the best headlights driving at night is more difficult due to reduced depth perception.

 

[P5-133XL]

I've been up I think around 50 hours or so. Towards the end I would laugh uncontrollably at the most trivial of things, feel extremely hungry, shiver for no reason and have some mild hallucinations. And to think some pay big dollars for drugs to do that to them.

The hunger never goes away. Shivering - never had that symptom. You wouldn't have had to do much longer to get to the numb (nothing matters)stage where the hallunications go away. The tunnel-vision and the one track mind slowly builds up during as the numbing progresses: You get to stay at numb for a long time. Of course as you go numb the trivality and the laughter disappears (lack of emotional control -> no emotions?)

 

[jtr1962]

Have you ever driven at high speeds for hundreds of km at a stretch? At 230-250 km/hr. one is alert at first, but after a few hours the same stresses that cause alertness cause one to tire and drive in a dangerous haze.

Not in real life, but in Train Simulator I've driven TGVs at 300 km/hr for a couple of hours straight. While there are no consequences to crashing as in real life, I did notice that after a fairly short time you become very accustomed to the speed, and when you need to slow down even 200 km/hr seems dog slow. I also found that you quickly lose concentration even at those high speeds if you don't vary your speed. Of course, varying your speed is easier in a car than a train. For one thing, trains take longer to change speeds. For another, you need to hold right at the limit to keep on schedule but in railroading speeding, even 1 km/hr over the limit, is usually a big no-no. That pretty much means I try to keep it at exactly 300 km/hr or whatever the limit happens to be. Gradients make it more interesting as they force you to adjust power up or down to hold the speed. Curves on the high-speed portions can all be taken at full-speed, as in real life, so all they do is make the route a little more interesting.

My recommendations to dd for this would be first to not do it all if possible. If he must, then varying speeds will do more to help keep awake and alert than driving either with traffic or very fast. All other things being equal, a steady low speed will put you to sleep faster than a steady high speed but I'd say it's best to avoid steady speeds at all. A pity our transportation system isn't set up for 200 mph speeds-the trip would be a nice, relatively quick 3 or so hour hop-not long enough for the haze you mentioned to set in.

 

[timwhit]

DD will be fine. I have taken road trips where I have driven for a good 30-35 hours without sleeping. Aspen to Denver where the car broke down and took 4 hours to fix, then to Chicago, then to Madison, WI. That whole trip was about 35 hours and there were about 5 hours when we weren't driving. I did about 19 hours of the driving.

This last March I drove from Daytona Beach, FL to Bloomington, IL then to Milwaukee, WI. I was tired at the end and it was especially bad because I was on I-43 at about 6 in the morning when no one was on the road, plus I was the only person awake in the car. I drank a 20 oz coffee and was alright after that.

Plus, if you have someone to talk to on the phone then you will be fine.

 

[ddrueding]

Plus, if you have someone to talk to on the phone then you will be fine.

I think this is the most important. I have a number of people that I will be able to talk to continuously though the night.

 

[Santilli]

Never made the trip with a phone. Always had two hands on the wheel...
s

 

[ddrueding]

Never made the trip with a phone. Always had two hands on the wheel...
s

Handsfree is a wonderful thing...

 

[The JoJo]

According to one experiment I just read about, drinking small quantities of coffee (or similar drink) quite often vs. large quantities seldom, the small and often wins.
In the test people we're subjected to a shift from 24h to 42h day, and those that drank often we're more alert and got better points in some tests made.