Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to change your life. Actually, that might not be true since I appear to be the last person in the world to find out about this, but here's the thing: I think we can all agree that trying to sleep on a plane sucks. In the past, I've just taken a deep breath, buried my head in my pillow, and willed myself to block out the secondhand iPod beat from the seat next to me and the screaming toddler in 11C. Now, however, I have discovered a travel secret that I'm fairly sure is going to change the way I fly from now on and the secret is this: white noise.

Unbeknownst to me before now, there are hundreds of places on the web were you can download free MP3s of white noise, load them on to your iPod or MP3 player, and tune into them on the plane when you want to block the world out. I've found this one fairly successful and I like the pink noise (pink noise, who knew!) at SimplyNoise.com too.

And if you're lucky enough to have an iPhone, consider this: a friend told me recently about an iPhone app that you can pay 99 cents to download, giving you the sound of crashing waves and rainforests---as well as good old traditional white noise---whenever you need it. I don't know about you, but I could always do with shutting up the people around me when I'm flying. I can't believe I didn't find out about this sooner.