Geeky Traveller

While it’s true that your average hotel comes with an alarm clock in their rooms, if you’ve crossed time zones or you’re extremely tired, it’s too easy to keep hitting the snooze button and go back to sleep. That can result in either a missed meeting, a missed check-out time, or just missing out on a planned day of vacation time if you sleep too long. And although you can often arrange a wake-up call, I know that personally I am capable of answering a phone and going straight back to DreamLand – when I was 15 I woke up at 11:30 one morning and found a detailed note that I had written while taking a message for my dad on the phone when someone called at 8 am and I had absolutely no recollection of even getting up, let alone talking on the phone.

If you’re away from home and you truly need or want to get up at a specific time, it might be worth your while to take a novelty alarm clock in your suitcase. One fun option (and of course, frustrating) is Clocky:

Clocky is a hilarious clock while will go off once and allow you to press the snooze button from the comfort of your bed. As soon as you hit the snooze button though, your one chance to get up is over because Clocky will then roll itself to the edge of your table, drop down to the floor and roll away, essentially hiding somewhere. When the alarm goes off again, you will be forced to get up and seek it out to turn it off.

It’s almost like a sitcom when you play it out in your head isn’t it? So is the equally innovative Puzzle Alarm Clock:

In a similar vein, the Puzzle Alarm Clock does not allow a simple snooze. With this one you must WORK for that extra snooze time. When the alarm goes off, it not only starts ringing, it also ejects four puzzle pieces into the air, scattering them. Yes, you guessed it. If you want to snooze or turn the alarm off, you have to quickly gather all four pieces and put them back where they belong in order to stop the alarm.

On a personal note, I think that I would probably break either one if I had to use them on a daily basis. I always set my alarm clock nine minutes before I’m supposed to get up so that I can get one nine minute snooze in, so if I had to chase my runaway clock or put together a puzzle (without my glasses) in a dark room at 6:30 am I would probably be hitting the snooze button with a hammer. However, for travel occasions, it could certainly make sure that you don’t miss that sunrise breakfast boat ride or that early business meeting.

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