Today is New Year's Eve, and unless you live in a city full of recovering alcoholics, teetotalers or Mormons, you're probably finalizing your plans for where, exactly, you'll settle in for a night of hard drinking.

Or maybe not. Perhaps you're past that, having realized long ago that getting smashed isn't worth the entire day you lose as a result. Perhaps you'll have a glass of Champagne at midnight and turn in, or do what I did a few years ago and turn in hours before midnight even strikes. (I have to admit it was pretty cool going to sleep and then waking up to a new year.)

Regardless of what you're doing tonight, most people will fit the first description. But here's a fact, albeit a tautological one: Being out and drunk on New Year's is only fun if you're drunk.

The reality is far less festive. Last year, I took a subway home at 1am and felt like I was in the worst nightclub on Earth. It was packed, it reeked of alcohol, and it was very well-lit. Drunk people were straddling their dates and making out on the seats. Vomit -- or something like it -- made its migratory way across the filthy floor of the train car, to which most people paid no mind at all. Remember, they were drunk.

Incidentally, a 13-year study by Columbia University found that nearly half of all subway deaths occur because of booze. It seems that liquid courage does not translate to real invincibility.

But back to last year's horrific trip home. I was sober, and I decided then that I hope to never again be in Midtown Manhattan on New Year's Eve. Tonight I will stay home, in Brooklyn, and plan to go for a 10-mile run first-thing tomorrow morning -- before 8am.

So, here's my question: Am I just an old, doddering man at 33, or does the tradition of drinking oneself stupid with millions of other people on a cold, January morning strike anyone else as just a little silly?

Or better yet, how about we work on a list of alternatives for ringing in the New Year.

I'll start it off: A 4-mile race in Central Park, the annual Emerald Nuts Midnight Run.

I realize I'm one of the few people this would appeal to, so if anyone else has some ideas, I'm all ears.

[Image: Fabolu for Wikimedia Commons]