It's Christmas season again – or Hannukah or Kwanzaa or whatever day that Satan-worshippers give each other goblets of blood and Entombed records – and you know what that means: visiting family. For those of us lucky enough to have put some distance between ourselves and the hardline Mormon compounds we grew up in, it's time for the yearly pilgrimage back home to eat food, do laundry and get new socks. But traveling during the holiday season is, to be blunt, a bed-wetting ass nightmare. Packed planes, bursting buses and totally 'tarded trains make it an epic frustration to get anywhere. But here at Heavy, we've put together a list of the best ways to make your journey less annoying. Read on, old friend.

The most important thing to save when you travel isn't money – it's personal space. When you're wedged in like a sardine with a hundred fellow travelers, every inch counts. The best way to preserve that space is, of course, to make yourself repellent to other travelers. Some lesser travel writers may recommend eating beans and cauliflower before you depart to arm your ass-cannon, but that's played out – and what if, by chance, you get seated next to a hot chick? You don't want to clench and pray all the way to St. Louis while you're trying to run game. No, the best way to secure ample space is simple. Head to the newsstand and buy a copy of the skankiest porno you can. When you take your seat, and no fine piece of trim is in site, open up your smutrag and flop it down on your chest. Pretend to doze off and I guarantee you that within minutes, your neighbors will be hustling to alternate seats. With them gone, you can sprawl out through the whole row.

With flights often oversold, the wise traveler can make some extra cash by agreeing to be bumped onto standby so more desperate people can board. Make your availability known at the departure desk when you arrive at the airport, and when you get bumped you can get airline miles, vouchers for flights, and sometimes even straight up cash for your trouble. Do this enough times in a row and you can spend Christmas with the fine folks at the Newark Airport T.G.I. Friday's instead of those drunk assholes you call a family, and nobody will think it's your fault. Win-win scenario.

Obviously, you should book your travel as early as possible so you don't have to pay the embezzlement prices that the airlines hit slackers like us with. But what if you space out on Christmas for some reason? Well, it's not like you can Slip-N-Slide on the tears of the Baby Jesus all the way back to Utah. You're going to need to find another way. Luckily, there are several low-cost ways to travel. For instance, you can look on Craigslist for ride shares – many people are driving home for the season and are happy to give up a passenger seat in exchange for gas money, conversation and maybe a handjob or two, if that's cool. In addition, you can travel like the old-timey hobos did and hop a train car – you might not ever make it home, but you'll learn a lot about eating beans out of a can and growing a beard for warmth. If you can't afford either of those options, there's always riding in the cargo hold of a Greyhound bus, which is slightly more comfortable than riding in the actual seats.

Some of us get home only to find that Mom has cleaned out our old bedroom to change it into a home office for her erotic scrapbooking business. After you have a good cry about your Star Wars action figures, which those poor kids won't even appreciate, you may need to figure out another place to crash. Hotels are probably full of other rejected children, but thankfully I have a solution that always works. Find out where your high school girlfriend lives and, palming a handful of gravel from the nearest driveway, peg her window with rocks at 2 AM. When she comes out, hold your hands up like you have an invisible boombox and start singing some Peter Gabriel. She's guaranteed to let you crash on her couch at worst and in her vagina at best. If her new husband opens the window instead, substitute "No Scrubs" by TLC and run as fast as you can.

So that's our advice – take it and travel in style, or ignore it and enjoy sharing space with an obese cockapoo lover with a whole iPhone full of photos to show you. The choice is yours!