Getting tipsy

The Washington Post harvests some neat travel tips from an airline website but those contributed by their readers were better still. A sampling:

•  Especially for men - carry an (empty) clear ziplock bag in your pocket. When emptying pockets of coins, keys, wallet, cellphones, wrist-watch, rings, etc for the X-ray - dump all into the ziplock bag. Eliminates standing there at other end of the X-ray fishing coins and other small items out of the little provided buckets/bins - just grab your zip-lock bag out of the bucket and off you go. (ed. - I might add, remove your belt before the security checkpoint and stow it in an outer pocket of your carryon or inside your personal bag.)
  

• Don’t assume that other countries follow the U.S. standard for passenger screening, like carrying liquids 4 oz or smaller  (ed. - 3 ounces actually) bottles packaged in ziploc. They chucked mine in the trash in Berlin’s airport, saying they have their own standards for protecting their planes. They also gave every passenger a good frisking, which TSA agents have told me in this country they are politically unable to do…

• Let the people that have the max size allowed carry on bag put their bag in the above bin before you try to squeeze by them in the aisle. If you want to get on the plane before me, get to the airport earlier…My flights are less then an hour, I don’t check bags because once I waited longer for my bag then my entire flight.

 OBOW welcomes any and all reader tips. There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors.

Packin' Pepto, Pardner

Judy at Mouse Tours is high on regular ingestion of Pepto-Bismol as a preventitive for traveler’s diarrhea. The amount she suggests and the fact that it’s a liquid make it tough for the light traveler, but there’s always the chewable tablets. For travel to many parts of the world packing the pink stuff is a good idea. I hate Imodium because it makes you feel so bad on day two.

Check out the nice site by the nice people at Mouse Tours. Also, here’s Pepto’s official travel tips page, which looks pretty good for a corporate site.

Weighty matters of legwear

Paring down the weight and bulk of the travel wardrobe is what going light is all about, and it’s achieved not just by carrying fewer pieces of clothing. The clothing chosen needs to weigh less than our everyday duds. Pants - men’s or women’s - are a great place to start. Case in point: A pair of cotton denim jeans in my size weighs 28 ounces, a pair of cotton khakis weighs 18 ounces, and a pair of polyester summer-weight slacks comes in at 12 ounces - that’s 42% as heavy as the jeans. And, the polys will dry overnight; the jeans might never dry in some climates. Obviously, to go light, the place to start is below the belt.

Extra towels, please - travel laundry

If you’re doing in-room sinkwashing you’ll need extra towels. Ask for them when you check in to the hotel so you’ll be sure to have them when laundry time rolls around. Some clothing will dry overnight easliy. Other clothing items need extra help. That’s where the towels come in. After rinsing your sink laundry and squeezing it out gently, lay it out on the the extra bath towel, then roll it up in the towel, then unroll it and hang it up. With all the moisture the towel soaks up, air drying overnight is a cinch. And no more puddles next to the bathtub. Your clothes may also dry more wrinkle-free since using the towel means you don’t have to wring them out so brutally, which probably also makes the clothes last longer. I like to pack a couple of plastic hangers in addition to a bungee clothesline - more space efficient and makes shirts dry with better shape/fewer wrinkles.

Gift idea for travelers/hipsters

Dave Scrimshaw’s hipster travel kit- of which duct tape is a major component (see below).

Duct tape travel hack

Duct tape can save your bag or your trip. This is no original idea, but still - don’t leave home without it. I do have a better variety of tape for you though. Scotch Heavy Duty All-Weather Duct Tape is amazing stuff. You can find it at hardware stores or home centers. It really is waterproof and will stick outdoors to nearly anything through any weather - for months. It can probably handle your ripped suitcase or broken pull-handle. I re-wrap about six feet of it around an empty plastic bottle, then cut the ends out of the bottle to make a flexible, flattenable core.

One cool thing - it’s a darker gray than regular duct tape, doesn’t look quite so much like, well, duct tape.

Knee Defender, Save Me!

You may decline your right to recline after reading veteran flight attendant James Wysong’s column - lest you fall victim to a curious contraption called the “Knee Defender”.

The power of the sport coat

The most powerful piece of clothing in the male traveler’s wardrobe is a good sport coat. This doesn’t apply to 20-something hostel-stayers and backpackers, but for most men, in most parts fo the world, a nice coat is a real plus. In Europe, where standards of appearance are often higher than in shorts-and-flipflops America, the sports jacket may ensure higher regard and better treatment for the wearer. It will get you in most restaurants, art galleries, and churches with no discomfort. A well-chosen coat can also double as a raincoat and provides a hedge against rapidly changing weather. There’s a reason why so many gentleman dress the way they do in the UK; they simply cannot trust the weather. And they like to look good.

Unseemly, malodorous conversation

Packing light means taking fewer clothes, which means washing them as you go. Any discussion of travel clothing and laundry involves unpleasant discussion of odor and  the results of the dreaded sniff test. Please forgive all such comment found on this site. It is necessary. That being said, the more testing I do on the Incredible Stinkfighter 1.0 homemade sink-wash laundry formula, the more convinced I am of its effectiveness. It turns ordinary poly/nylon underwear into high-performance anti-microbial underwear that doesn’t stink at the end of the day. Since travel is about spending time in close quarters with people you know and meeting new people you don’t know, odor reduction is definite plus, even if it makes for unpleasant, travel-geeky conversation.

Quickest way to lose seven pounds

The quicket way to lose seven pounds from your travel kit: Leave the laptop at home. This may not be possible for business travelers, professional/addictive bloggers, journalists, or photographers. But, if you can, leave the little monster at home. If you must write, get a Moleskine notebook and a tubular ink-based data entry device (pen). The rugged little Moleskine is instant cool. I’ve gone with the even lighter soft-cover Moleskine cahier for travel. Let’s face it, the little Moleskine looks better at dinner than the Dell.

Best place to learn the potential of the little notebook is at the Moleskinerie. 

 (Photo below from Irish Typepad on Flickr)

Solid shampoo & shaving oil

Jim Markel of redoxx.com sends in this solid tip:”I recently returned from a trip and had some issue with TSA on liquids, so i have been searching the world over for alternatives. Check out Lush.com’s solid shampoo, works well!”

Another way to save space in the TSA-approved one-quart baggie is to use shaving oil rather than shaving cream. I picked this up from Doug Dyment of onebag.com. He recommends a British brand of oil, but I found a great USA brand - Pacific Shaving Company. The tiny, thumb-sized, half-ounce bottle is said to be good for almost 100 shaves. I believe it - I can shave with only 8 drops, and it’s a better shave than foam or gel. I have hair on my head, but I’m guessing it would work great on a bald head or a lady’s legs…

If shaving cream is more to your liking, you can buy almost anything in TSA-approved travel sizes here. 

Tips galore

Some people love Rick Steves and some don't. There's no denying that, along with Doug Dyment, he's clearly one of one-bag travel's staunchest promoters. There's also no denying his "Grafitti Wall" board has lots of light travel tips -- some great, some goofy. Takes some wading through, but you'll find some good stuff there.

Incredible Stinkfighter 1.0 - BETA TEST

Doing laundry on the road is one of the necessities of light, one-bag travel. You don’t need ten changes of underwear for a ten-day trip; you can get by with three. But, you must use synthetics to successfully wash and dry overnight in the hotel room or hostel. Therein lies the problem: Synthetics get stinky fast. One solution is to pay $18-$35 for high-tech underclothing which has expensive fabric with built-in anti-microbial (and, hence, anti-odor) properties.

I have discovered another, cheaper way: Sink wash your garden-variety synthetic (polyester/nylon) undies using my odor-fighting concoction. Here’s how you do it. Fill the sink about half way with luke warm water. Mix in a couple of glugs of clear Softsoap antibacterial handsoap and a couple of spritzes of Febreze Anti-Microbial. Handwash the undies, then rinse them out quickly - not too aggressively. Apparently enough of the anti-bacterial and anti-microbial stuff stays in the fabric to make it perform like the $25 hi-tech variety. My $10 Champions now finish a sweaty day as sweetly as my  more-expensive Terramar briefs (with Visaendurance wonder fabric). The hi-tech fabrics are probably still a little better, and they are definitely still preferable for backpackers who may have nothing more than a creek to wash in or who want to stick with green, biodegradeable detergents. But, for the cost-conscious light traveler my method may be just the ticket. This method works equally well for briefs or undershirts. I’ve used it on my ExOfficio Air Strip shirt, too.

I get this stuff through the carryon screeners by filling two 2-ounce hand sanitizer bottlew with the soap and a 2-ounce spray bottle (half-full) with the Febreze. This is enough for ten days or so.  I don’t mix it together until it hits the sink.

I haven’t been using this concoction long. Please let me know how it works for you.  Your input may result in an even better Stinkfighter 2.0,

DISCLAIMER: I cannot guarantee that this method will not harm or shorten the working life of some garments, but I have no reason to believe that the method is detrimental to any fabrics or finishes.