Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) lives amid the palm trees, balmy climate and tropical flowers of Honolulu. But ask about his commute to and from the vacation wonderland and it’s not pretty.

That 12- to 13-hour journey home, two to three times a month, begins with a series of rituals — some not so pleasant to visualize.

Abercrombie begins by locking earplugs into place to cut down on vibrations and fatigue. He drinks as much water as he can stand, and then drinks some more. He avoids caffeine and alcohol as if they were poison and uses an eye mask to help him rest. Last, but certainly not least, he lodges a Vaseline-like ointment up each nostril to keep his nasal passages from drying out.

“I’m quite an impressive sight,” he says, “a congressman with his finger up his nose.”

Lawmakers like Abercrombie who must travel clear across the country experience congressional life differently from their geographically more fortunate colleagues. In some instances, the commute has caused lawmakers to retire. But the long voyage takes its physical and mental toll on everyone.

Lawmakers who face tough commutes establish routines so that they can endure and even find humor in the bleakest situations.

Rep. Mike Simpson (D-Idaho), who has a door-to-door commute of eight hours home to Boise, often has to change planes two or three times. “I’ve got a bad back, and the most obnoxious thing I can do is sit on a plane,” he says.

There are other obnoxious experiences. Simpson has watched — and smelled — passengers vomit in seats near his. “There are three things I hate,” he says. “I hate bathrooms in airports. I hate airplanes, and I hate people who sit in window seats who have a 15-minute bladder capacity.”

Simpson says there ought to be dietary guidelines on airplanes aside from the already stated laws. “No one should eat excessive lettuce or beans 24 hours before you get on plane,” he says, adding, “You can take your purse or briefcase on board, but anything else has to be checked. It just takes forever.”

To help combat the hellishness of his commute, the lawmaker’s wife, Kathy, bought him an iPod music player with Bose noise-reduction earphones. He also reads light books and murder mysteries.

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), whose three-hour train ride to the Bronx is a breeze compared to Abercrombie’s and Simpson’s commutes, is also a recent fan of the iPod and a portable DVD player his wife bought him. On it, he watches old black-and-white mystery movies.

Serrano says he stopped reading “heavy-duty fiscal reports” a while back in exchange for his high-tech toys. “There are some folks in life who want to maintain some sort of intellectual front,” he says. “I make no secret about it. I read Mad magazine and the sports pages.”

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) deals with a four-hour flight, one-hour drive and two-hour time difference each time he goes home. Just beginning his second term in Congress, he says, “Two years ago it was almost an adventure. Now at the end of flights I get antsy.”

Bishop says he believes the commute was among the reasons his predecessor, Rep. James Hansen (R), retired from Congress. “I think it was starting to affect his health,” he says.

So does that inspire Bishop to take better care of himself? “No,” he says. “I’m getting older and fatter all the time. I’ve put on 20 pounds. I don’t have time to exercise.”

Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) has no ill will toward the weekly commute from Gulfport, Miss., and back. “It’s better than the alternative,” he says, which is “to live here. I’d be absolutely miserable.”

Taylor says he reads or tries to sleep. “Hopefully, I put a baseball cap over my face so my mouth isn’t hanging open,” he says.

When Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii), a second-term lawmaker, first began doing his long commute, he took work and tried to read. “That didn’t work at all,” says Case, who now “zones out on the plane” or “time warps” his way home. “I like to go into the wormhole,” he says.

Case boasts of 30 round trips home in 2003 and 25 in 2004. He says the amount he travels makes it harder for other Hawaiian lawmakers to stay in Washington on the weekends.

Lawmakers such as, say, Abercrombie, who goes home two to three times a month. Abercrombie can’t go through a flight without performing his rituals, which include tummy tightening, shoulder shrugs and stretching.

He has been doing the commute for 14 years and says bluntly, “You never get used to it.” But, he adds, “It’s not frustrating; it comes with the job. You deal with it.”

Other rules of his plane ride: “Eat fruit, keep your regular meal time, don’t drink juices — too much sugar.” In addition, exercise. When Abercrombie arrives in Washington, among the first things he does is get on the stationary bike for 30 minutes.

Rep. Linda Sanchez’s (D-Calif.) trip home each week is an “eight-hour ordeal.” She admits the heavy toll it takes, saying, “It’s pretty miserable. Your body is a perpetual state of not knowing what time zone you’re in.”

Sanchez has heard all the tricks to try to make the ordeal more bearable, such as only packing carry-on luggage, using headsets and earplugs, drinking water and taking melatonin to sleep. For the most part, she says, nothing works: “You never get used to it. You just make yourself as comfortable as you can.”

When she arrives in Washington, Sanchez says, her staff knows to give her some quiet time. “Poor me a cup of coffee, close the door, don’t bother me,” she says, admitting her post-flight crankiness.

At a recent event at a high school in her district, Sanchez nixed the perception that lawmakers live like movie stars. She recalled a question by a student who asked, “What jet do you own?” She replied, “A big one, called United.”