Travel Rules
Don't voluntarily travel to the West Coast from the East Coast more than once in a 6-month period–unless, of course, you're in a long distance relationship and 12-hour travel days simply build the anticipation of seeing your significant other.
When staying with a friend, especially one that doesn't have a guest space, don't stay more than three days, four max. This rule especially applies when the friend is working some of the time. Three to four days is more than enough time to get the feel of the place. The days will be packed, potentially exhausting, but then you can take a day trip or an overnight to a nearby place and you won't be overstaying your welcome.
Supplementary rule: If you feel ready to go home before the trip is over, you've stayed too long. If you're sad to go, you're leaving at the exact right time. It's like when I was a kid and my mom would come to pick me up from the play-date and I would hide in the closet so she couldn't take me home because I was having such a good time. That's the feeling you want when you leave.
When traveling long distances, such as the West Coast or overseas, bring a travel buddy, if possible. Especially if your accommodations are with that friend who still has to work while you're there. A travel buddy will make the whole experience more enjoyable and won't leave you too dependent on your host.
Case-in-point: I'm on the introverted side and I like being independent, walking around a big city by myself (I mean, I did it for years in New York), but even I was weary of walking around London alone for the third work-day in a row. I actually went a bit crazy, and was talking to myself in my head in a British accent.
Don't bring more than one novel. You won't read them all. You won't even finish the one you brought. Which, actually, you should have left behind because it's dense and confusing and you should have just put a pause on that one so you could read the cheesy beach read about surfers at the beach while you were at the beach watching people surf.
Additionally, you must learn the difference between travel and vacation. Travel is the kind of trip in which you visit friends or new places and run around and maybe occasionally relax with a show or movie. You only need one novel on this kind of trip, and you probably won't finish it. It's just for the plane, mostly. Vacation is the thing where you go to a remote house in the mountains or on the beach, and the whole point is to be in that one house and sit on the same porch or beach everyday and read-read-read when you're not swimming, hiking, cooking for the crew, and playing games. You might bring two books to this kind of vacation. You might even bring a fiction and non-fiction and give them turns.
Bringing only one to two books also gives you the option of finding a book in the place you're visiting–quite fun! Like how I found that confusing and dense novel in a little used bookshop in Notting Hill on that trip to London where I walked around the city by myself for three days, and finally read two summers later. I did, however, pick up two books at Blackwell's in Oxford that I read immediately and loved and even lent to a friend.
This rule is long with multiple subpoints because, if it isn't obvious, deciding which books to bring on trips is quite hard for me and there's nothing I dislike more than being caught in a situation without the right book, or any book at all!
Remember that travel is an art and I'm sure there are plenty of travel blogs out there telling you exactly how you should travel, but honestly I prefer this whole travel-trial-by-error thing because I've learned a lot about myself and how I want to travel that I really think a travel blog couldn't have told me anyhow. So if you mess up and take a trip that flops or you get homesick, which rarely happens to me but actually did this last trip and caught me surprise, don't be too hard on yourself! Brush the sand off your feet, take notes of what you would do differently next time, and travel on!