(If you're just sitting down with your breakfast, you might want to move along...)

As far as I'm concerned, these are three of the least pleasant (non-life threatening) experiences a person can have:

1. The 12 hours of preparation for a colonoscopy.

2. Cleaning a baby who has shit out of his or her diaper.

3. Throwing up on an airplane.

Care to guess which of these I've suffered through in the last few hours?

About three hours into my flight from Seattle to Newark, I awoke with a need to visit the restroom. As I walked from row 5 to the rear of the plane, I realized I was feeling a bit clammy and light-headed. Upon my arrival in the tiny bathroom, I realized my problem was not in fact the need to pee. Rather, one of my meals had decided it was unhappy and wanted to relocate.

There's really not much worse than having to put your head any closer to a stench-filled airplane toilet. I tried it from a distance, but that seemed potentially messy. So I got my head down there and took care of business. I then hung out near the toilet for 30 minutes, hoping to avoid a mad dash back down the aisle for a repeat visit.

I guess it could have been worse. I could have opted to wait to use the bathroom until we landed. I'm sure my demure French seatmate would have enjoyed that.

For those keeping track at home, this is the third time I've hurled on a plane. All things being equal, this was probably the least-troublesome occurrence. The runaway winner, if it can be called that, was the time I took the redeye home from San Diego after a huge meal at this joint. That was an absolute disaster, featuring a crazed leap over my seatmate, a sprint to the bathroom holding my mouth shut and a flight attendant holding my hair.

Compared to that, today's festivities barely register.