Go Bag – Part 2

Yeah, that whole post again tomorrow bit wasn’t working out, was it? Anyway, the front pocket of my backpack is pretty packed, but it gets a lot roomier moving backwards.

The second pocket is where I carry stuff that I don’t need that often, more for emergencies. I keep a USB-Car adaptor in there in case I’m in a rental car and forgot my car charger for the iPhone (happens more often than I care to admit). I also keep a small LED flashlight and a glow stick in there. Yeah, one of those snap it and shake it glow sticks. It’s kind of a just in case thing, but when the power’s out, you need a light source, and for less than a dollar, it’s worth keeping one on hand. I also keep one in the glove box of each car and a few stashed around the house for storms. They don’t give off much light, but enough to move around by, and they don’t run out of lamp oil or have their batteries die with no use.

My portable hard drive rides in this pocket when it’s not on the desk I’m working at. I carry a 500GB external HD pretty much everywhere, because it has a super-small form factor and holds all my music, all my family photos and pretty much everything I’ve ever written. And a bunch of porn, to boot! I picked it up for less than a hundred bucks, and it lets me keep my old MacBook plugging along without jamming up the hard drive.

I also carry a point n shoot digital camera with a 1GB SD card. It’s a Kodak that I picked up at Wal-Mart a couple years ago when I couldn’t find my Canon on the way to the airport. It’s worked out fine and takes decent pictures, and I typically am not carrying my SLR camera. I use it less and less since I got the iPhone, but it does take way better photos than the phone.

I turned an Altoids tin into an office emergency kit, with a few paperclips, binder clips and safety pins in there, along with a 512MB memory stick. I took a few rubber bands and wrapped them around the outside to keep the tin closed, and used them to hold an emergency sewing kit to the outside. There’s been more than one time when it’s been VERY important to have a needle and thread on hand, and a couple of spare buttons and safety pins are worth their weight in gold.

The last thing in the front pocket is a Do Not Disturb sign I swiped from a Marriott somewhere. The worst thing in the world is getting to a hotel very late at night and realizing that this is the ONE room in the building that doesn’t have a DND sign for door. So I grabbed one from a hotel and stuck it in my bag. It’s better than writing “Bugger OFF” on a notepad and jamming it into the keycard slot, which I’ve also done in a pinch.

Other things I always have with me are a book, a couple of copies of my book (because I have no idea when someone will develop a desperate need for poetry), a CAT5 cable (preferably 10′) and a notepad. If it’s a trip of any length I also have my noise-cancelling headphones, which I paid way too much for in the Atlanta airport one trip, but have proven themselves to be more than worth the cost every time I put them on. I also keep a couple of small caribiners clipped to the outside of the bag, just in case. Just in case of what I’m never really sure, but a couple of caribiners are usually pretty handy, and they’re lightweight enough not to bother me carrying them around everywhere.

Keeping this bag packed this way lets me grab it and go without having to think about packing, which means that there is less opportunity for me to forget shit when I’m on the way out the door. Having just gotten on blood pressure medication recently, the policy of keeping a few days’ worth of drugs in my bag is more important, as I recently found out what a flaming pain in the ass it is to get a prescription moved to another state in a hurry. So now I just drop in my laptop, portable HD and phone and I’m good to go. Now that cooler weather is here, I’ve moved back into my favorite jacket in the world, which has more pockets than I can keep track of, so I’ll be moving a few things back and forth from the backpack to the jacket, and adding a few trip-specific things like digital voice recorder, business cards, etc.

Notes from the road – what’s in your go bag?

Reading Pauly’s travel advice recently led me to think “Hey, you travel a lot, too, but kinda in a different fashion. Why not put together a few tips for frequent (or infrequent) business travellers?” So here they come – John’s tips on travelling light but travelling complete.

Most folks who travel often keep a “go bag,” that bag of stuff that is either ready to go at a moment’s notice, or just goes everywhere with them. In some cases, this is a suitcase with two pairs of socks and underwear, a dop kit and a change of clothes. In my case, my daily briefcase is my “go bag,” more for technology and other things that I find myself needing on a regular basis than a change of clothes. I’m not in a line of work where I don’t have any advance notice of my travel, so I can always swing home and pack before I roll out somewhere, and after spending the equivalent of 1/4 of this year away from home (and I’m not in what is typically a “travel” job) I’ve gotten my packing procedure down pretty well.

But back to my backpack. I replaced my briefcase with a backpack when I realized that two straps is just better than one, and I was swapping between bags when I flew anyway, so why not just settle on the backpack as a day-to-day bag? So I did. It’s a Jansport backpack, black, with a handle at the top that has a piece of neon green gaffer’s tape wrapped around the handle. The handle’s intact, but in a field where black is the color of choice, having something to distinguish your bag from every other black bag is important.

The bag that I carry has a laptop compartment where my Macbook lives, and there are plenty of pockets scattered throughout for all my stuff. Here’s a list of the pockets and the things that I won’t leave home without.

Front pocket – This is where I stash the things that I need to access quickly and frequently. Up front lives a Microsoft Arc wireless mouse.I picked this mouse because of the small form factor, and folding it turns it off, which is nice. Up front I also carry a power adaptor for my MacBook. I have three of these – one lives at home, one lives in my Charlotte office, and one lives in my backpack. It was worth the extra cash for me to not have to deal with wires in the two offices where I most frequently hook up the computer.

There’s also a couple of pens, at least one Sharpie, and a Leatherman in the front pockets. Obviously the Leatherman stays behind when I fly, but it’s an invaluable tool in so many ways. I carry the Leatherman Pulse, which is a newer model that includes scissors along with the traditional file, needle-nose pliers, wire cutters, knife and multiple screwdrivers. It also has a ruler along the back edge and a bottle/can opener.

Also up front live the headphones for my iPhone, which are more backup headphones than anything, along with a USB cable for the iPhone and the wall charger for my BlueTooth headset. I have the Jawbone Prime headset, which I like quite a bit. The headset itself livesin my car, but I keep the charger in my bag for two reasons – so I remember to take it out of the car when I need to charge the headset, and because the adaptor is a USB cable that plugs into a wall outlet, so I can unplug the Jawbone charger and plug in my iPhone USB cable and charge my phone or headset off the same device. I also typically carry my prescriptions in the front pocket, and when I’m travelling I transfer enough pills to get me through the anticipated length of the trip plus one day and leave most of the pills at home. That way I’ve got my drugs with me, but if I’m stupid enough to leave them in the hotel, I haven’t screwed myself when I get home.

Wow, that’s a bunch of shit and I’ve only gone through one pocket! I’ll be back later with inventory of the rest of the bag, which has a second front pocket, main compartment and then a rear compartment with some storage in addition to the laptop compartment.

Travel Notes

I’m thinking about starting a new feature here involving hotel and restaurant reviews, given the amount that I’m travelling lately. Of course, the information contained herein would likely only be of use to folks travelling to Atlanta or various portions of North Carolina, but who knows, maybe somebody would find those scribbles useful. There’s certainly nothing to report on the poker front, since I haven’t played a hand of cards in weeks. I’ve got a seat at a new small buy-in tourney tonight, though, so we’ll see how that goes. This weekend might even see a return of the home game if I can make the schedule work. Summer’s tough for home games with people taking long vacations and other travel, not to mention my screwy work schedule.

So last week was spent mostly on the road. I drove to Atlanta Sunday afternoon to be there in time to do my scintillating recap of the Sunday Warm-Up for PokerStars, then was in Atlanta through Tuesday afternoon. Spent Tuesday night at home, then headed east on Wednesday morning. I went to Elizabeth City on Wednesday, then continued on to Manteo (home of the first honky child born in the US and the Lost Colony outdoor drama). From Manteo went back to Elizabeth City, then to Greenville, NC (NOT G-Vegas, dammit), then to Washington, NC (also the less interesting of two cities of the same name), then back home after a couple of meetings in Raleigh. That road trip sucked up 3 days and roughly eight or nine hundred miles. I typically stay in Marriott hotels when I travel, because I’m high on the rewards list with Marriott, and the rooms are typically harmless. I crashed in a nice Marriott in Atlanta, then a decent Fairfield in Elizabeth City.

FairField Inns are kinda hit or miss. As the entry-level hotel in the Marriott chain, the older ones are pretty dumpy, with exterior doors (a big negative on my travel requirements) and crappy beds. But some of them (like the one in Wytheville, VA) are pretty damn swank. The one in Elizabeth City was pretty nice. I sprung for the jacuzzi room upgrade, which turned into a suite, with a pair of LCD TVs and an iHome stereo rig. So I put the iPod on the stereo and settled in for a nice soak. Just what the Dr. ordered after a long day in the car.

Less impressive was the Courtyard in Greenville, NC. I’m always baffled by the fact that the Courtyard, which is designed for business travelers, is typically more expensive with fewer amenities than a Fairfield. Yes, it did have wireless internet while the Fairfield had wired internet, but that was the only upgrade. The bed was hard as a rock, and the shower head was located at about 5’5″ off the floor of the tub. I’m 6’1″, so this was an issue. I do not enjoy doing backbends in the shower in the morning. Any place with low-hanging shower heads goes on my “not again” list.

So I’ve been skewing my lodging choices to the ends of the spectrum, either hitting a full-scale Marriott, or trying to find a new or newly renovated Fairfield. The rooms (and bathrooms) in the Marriotts tend to be bigger and nicer, but the automatic inclusion of the mini-fridge in a Fairfield counts for a lot when I’m going to be in the town for several days.

Later on, we’ll talk about road food, when to explore and when to concentrate on getting something harmless that won’t have you doing unpleasant butt-clenches on the highway.