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silverflight8I keep thinking about how I should post and somehow the topic that has floated up is...packing for trips??
For a bit I've been researching luggage and thinking about what I like about my set up and all that. I'm incapable of making large purchases without first wildly over-researching them and quadruple guessing if I need it and wavering between options, and then once I've decided, waiting like a spider for a deal on what I want, so I've accrued Thoughts on This Topic. Most of my trips are around 1 week to 2 weeks; previously I would mostly do urban cities with public transit, I visit family for several weeks sometimes, but now I also do a lot of birding-specific trips. I do sometimes do smaller trips, like a night or two. The frustration of using my stupid backpack, which I believe is something like 20ish litres in volume (North Face Vault for women) and is annoyingly small, droves me nuts. I have a roller bag for the longer trips, which is great, but it was nearly impossible to pack a weekend trip in the backpack, which is just absurd. I don't pack that much! It's just incredibly inefficient and tiny and I swear the instant you put a laptop in the sleeve - which I don't even travel with generally!! - the whole thing shrinks to about 5L of packing volume and feels super uncomfortable. Why did I buy this backpack? It was 2020 and I needed a backpack and couldn't try one on and it wasn't too crazy expensive, but I hate it. It is so uncomfortable to carry, even though it's not that big and not very heavy, because I just ordered online.
I started reading stuff on r/onebag which is about travel with only one bag, i.e. no checked bags and if you have a carry on, you only have that. A lot of the reasoning is stuff I agree with - luggage is encumbrance, you have to keep track of it and watch it, if there are stairs you have to haul it, if there are cobblestones you have to drag it, and checked bags can get lost. Minimizing your baggage means less weight to carry. There's a lot of flat lays of what people packed when going to X destination for Y days and reporting back what they used and didn't, which is always interesting. As it's reddit, lots of focus on tech-gear, there are people who have set-ups for "infinite" travel (i.e. not a fixed 2 week trip but for 8 months, 2 years, whatever). Very fond of washing your clothes every day or two in the sink and hang drying, and also only carrying 3 pairs of underwear (this one is the funniest). "Don't pack your fears".
As I type this I am flashing back to all these ultimately-okay-but-so-annoying-in-the-moment memories: went to Paris, took the Metro, there are so many stairs, taking turnstiles sucks with luggage; Air Canada asked me to check my carryon-sized luggage and I did and then they lost it, my shoes and socks and pants got soaked and I had nothing to wear; once I was trying to take the subway to get to the train station and my rolling luggage handle broke as I was hauling it around and I had to try to hoof it while carrying it, sweating profusely and stressing out. There's also the issue of overhead bin space, i.e. as airlines have charged fees for checking bags, they've incentivized people who used to check bags to carry-on their stuff. So you have to worry about that - and if it doesn't fit, then they will gate-check your bag, and then there's the risk of losing it again. After reviewing what I did have and my usual travel, I decided I wanted a bag for really short trips that would fit under an airplane seat, but have more space and better organized than my current backpack, and ideally nicer to carry physically.
I've learned a lot from past mistakes like:
*If you go for 1 month do not bring pans and kitchen knives, good grief. You hate cooking, you are not going to cook. Also there was no kitchen. That was the last time I ever brought a checked bag.
*If it goes down to 17C at night a knee-length dress is not going to cut it and you will be cold. Bring a sweater/jacket and something to cover your legs.
*The one time I forgot flipflops I was staying in this set up where my room was private, but to get to the bathroom I had to go into the hallway, down a flight of stairs, and into another suite. The previous room I was staying in was just sharing an apartment with a nice clean lady so it was fine just nipping across the hallway; this second place, the hallway was between apartments, so it was trod on by people with shoes on. I think I tried this for one night and then I had to search for any kind of slipper, which was a quest that was only partially successful (I got them but they were so expensive, I didn't know where to get the cheap kind).
*Recently I went to Florida and I spent every single day outside starting around 6am going until the afternoon/evening. Even in Mar/Apr, the temperature range is something like 23-32C, and really, really humid. I also was arriving from a climate where I started wearing a sweater in September and hadn't stopped until I arrived in Miami. I completely forgot how sweaty you get. When it's cold you can wear the same clothes, swapping out underwear of course, for 2-3 days, especially if you aren't exerting yourself. But I was, I was running around in the Everglades and getting into my rental car that was approximately a billionty degrees after sitting in the sun for 3 hours, and if I could change my clothes 2x a day I would be tempted to. I packed 4 shirts - cotton t-shirt, cotton long sleeve, 2 hiking shirts (light synthetic button-down) plus what I wore on the plane. Completely insufficient as the cotton things were miserably hot and 2 shirts is not enough for 13 days. Yes, you need more layers and therefore more space in your luggage when it's cold - but you also cannot wear the same shirt when it's hot. It's just too gross.
*If you plan to do laundry mid-trip, bring a detergent sheet or something, single-use packets are expensive in those laundry room vending machines
*If you have a backpack + roller, and the roller gets checked (or even if it doesn't), put a set of underwear + pajamas plus toiletries etc in the backpack. That way when the roller gets lost, you might need to re-wear the same outfit but at least you didn't have to sleep in it, too.
*If you want ice to keep your lunch bag cool, freezing water in a reusable ziplock bag = good. Freezing water in a thin plastic bag for bagging produce = this will stick permanently to the glacier in your minifridge and you will never be able to remove it
So anyway with all that in mind, although the onebag vision is pretty great, and I entertained visions of me onebagging my future birding adventures with a 35L Allpa or something, I don't think it's feasible. Two points: one, I hate carrying large heavy backpacks, and I would have to carry one, because two: I do actually have to carry some stuff that onebag people don't. Binoculars are non-negotiable and I usually want my camera, and those two items take up a lot of space. But more importantly, the onebag thing mostly works in urban places where you might go out to dinner or explore a museum and go to a wine-tasting and walk around some paved areas. I get rained on and sweat and step in mud and goose poop and get covered in dust (so much dust) and spray DEET on me and my clothes daily. A lot of my clothes, no matter how capsule-wardrobe they are, just need to be washed after one wearing, and I just don't have the appetite to do it every day in the sink. Underwear is the smallest garment you own, why skimp there?! I don't think my packing is perfect, but it's pretty pared down, I don't fill my rollerbag and backpack, and I use pretty much all the items. Having two pairs of shoes has saved me so many times because I often get my shoes wet because dew and rain; the lightweight shoes that people suggest, like a set-up where you wear sneakers and bring sandals, is impractical - I'm not going to hike in sandals. I also feel like the idea of "if you are missing it, you can buy it" is not a great idea. I know what they mean - don't try to prepare for an Arctic blast in Arizona and well, if it ever does happen, you can go into a shop and get a sweater. But it gets carried way too far, and the strategy of achieving lighter luggage by essentially buying stuff at the destination and then trashing it (or donating it) is wasteful and not economical.
I decided that for the birding trips I'll just keep on with my roller bag + backpack, and got a short-haul kind of backpack. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I test-packed it and like it a lot so far, and it's surprisingly roomy for 28L, so I'm excited. It fits under the seat, it is clamshell style, and has several zippered pockets for organization, and I plan to retire my North Face one from travelling. That backpack remains my work/commute one, since top-open and tiny is good for daily, but it's eventually became so irritating for travel that it kicked off this entire Luggage Thoughts and Purchase cycle. (Seriously, I would put binoculars + camera + 1 shirt + 1 pants + 1 waterbottle in, and then I would have to start forcing things into it.)
For a bit I've been researching luggage and thinking about what I like about my set up and all that. I'm incapable of making large purchases without first wildly over-researching them and quadruple guessing if I need it and wavering between options, and then once I've decided, waiting like a spider for a deal on what I want, so I've accrued Thoughts on This Topic. Most of my trips are around 1 week to 2 weeks; previously I would mostly do urban cities with public transit, I visit family for several weeks sometimes, but now I also do a lot of birding-specific trips. I do sometimes do smaller trips, like a night or two. The frustration of using my stupid backpack, which I believe is something like 20ish litres in volume (North Face Vault for women) and is annoyingly small, droves me nuts. I have a roller bag for the longer trips, which is great, but it was nearly impossible to pack a weekend trip in the backpack, which is just absurd. I don't pack that much! It's just incredibly inefficient and tiny and I swear the instant you put a laptop in the sleeve - which I don't even travel with generally!! - the whole thing shrinks to about 5L of packing volume and feels super uncomfortable. Why did I buy this backpack? It was 2020 and I needed a backpack and couldn't try one on and it wasn't too crazy expensive, but I hate it. It is so uncomfortable to carry, even though it's not that big and not very heavy, because I just ordered online.
I started reading stuff on r/onebag which is about travel with only one bag, i.e. no checked bags and if you have a carry on, you only have that. A lot of the reasoning is stuff I agree with - luggage is encumbrance, you have to keep track of it and watch it, if there are stairs you have to haul it, if there are cobblestones you have to drag it, and checked bags can get lost. Minimizing your baggage means less weight to carry. There's a lot of flat lays of what people packed when going to X destination for Y days and reporting back what they used and didn't, which is always interesting. As it's reddit, lots of focus on tech-gear, there are people who have set-ups for "infinite" travel (i.e. not a fixed 2 week trip but for 8 months, 2 years, whatever). Very fond of washing your clothes every day or two in the sink and hang drying, and also only carrying 3 pairs of underwear (this one is the funniest). "Don't pack your fears".
As I type this I am flashing back to all these ultimately-okay-but-so-annoying-in-the-moment memories: went to Paris, took the Metro, there are so many stairs, taking turnstiles sucks with luggage; Air Canada asked me to check my carryon-sized luggage and I did and then they lost it, my shoes and socks and pants got soaked and I had nothing to wear; once I was trying to take the subway to get to the train station and my rolling luggage handle broke as I was hauling it around and I had to try to hoof it while carrying it, sweating profusely and stressing out. There's also the issue of overhead bin space, i.e. as airlines have charged fees for checking bags, they've incentivized people who used to check bags to carry-on their stuff. So you have to worry about that - and if it doesn't fit, then they will gate-check your bag, and then there's the risk of losing it again. After reviewing what I did have and my usual travel, I decided I wanted a bag for really short trips that would fit under an airplane seat, but have more space and better organized than my current backpack, and ideally nicer to carry physically.
I've learned a lot from past mistakes like:
*If you go for 1 month do not bring pans and kitchen knives, good grief. You hate cooking, you are not going to cook. Also there was no kitchen. That was the last time I ever brought a checked bag.
*If it goes down to 17C at night a knee-length dress is not going to cut it and you will be cold. Bring a sweater/jacket and something to cover your legs.
*The one time I forgot flipflops I was staying in this set up where my room was private, but to get to the bathroom I had to go into the hallway, down a flight of stairs, and into another suite. The previous room I was staying in was just sharing an apartment with a nice clean lady so it was fine just nipping across the hallway; this second place, the hallway was between apartments, so it was trod on by people with shoes on. I think I tried this for one night and then I had to search for any kind of slipper, which was a quest that was only partially successful (I got them but they were so expensive, I didn't know where to get the cheap kind).
*Recently I went to Florida and I spent every single day outside starting around 6am going until the afternoon/evening. Even in Mar/Apr, the temperature range is something like 23-32C, and really, really humid. I also was arriving from a climate where I started wearing a sweater in September and hadn't stopped until I arrived in Miami. I completely forgot how sweaty you get. When it's cold you can wear the same clothes, swapping out underwear of course, for 2-3 days, especially if you aren't exerting yourself. But I was, I was running around in the Everglades and getting into my rental car that was approximately a billionty degrees after sitting in the sun for 3 hours, and if I could change my clothes 2x a day I would be tempted to. I packed 4 shirts - cotton t-shirt, cotton long sleeve, 2 hiking shirts (light synthetic button-down) plus what I wore on the plane. Completely insufficient as the cotton things were miserably hot and 2 shirts is not enough for 13 days. Yes, you need more layers and therefore more space in your luggage when it's cold - but you also cannot wear the same shirt when it's hot. It's just too gross.
*If you plan to do laundry mid-trip, bring a detergent sheet or something, single-use packets are expensive in those laundry room vending machines
*If you have a backpack + roller, and the roller gets checked (or even if it doesn't), put a set of underwear + pajamas plus toiletries etc in the backpack. That way when the roller gets lost, you might need to re-wear the same outfit but at least you didn't have to sleep in it, too.
*If you want ice to keep your lunch bag cool, freezing water in a reusable ziplock bag = good. Freezing water in a thin plastic bag for bagging produce = this will stick permanently to the glacier in your minifridge and you will never be able to remove it
So anyway with all that in mind, although the onebag vision is pretty great, and I entertained visions of me onebagging my future birding adventures with a 35L Allpa or something, I don't think it's feasible. Two points: one, I hate carrying large heavy backpacks, and I would have to carry one, because two: I do actually have to carry some stuff that onebag people don't. Binoculars are non-negotiable and I usually want my camera, and those two items take up a lot of space. But more importantly, the onebag thing mostly works in urban places where you might go out to dinner or explore a museum and go to a wine-tasting and walk around some paved areas. I get rained on and sweat and step in mud and goose poop and get covered in dust (so much dust) and spray DEET on me and my clothes daily. A lot of my clothes, no matter how capsule-wardrobe they are, just need to be washed after one wearing, and I just don't have the appetite to do it every day in the sink. Underwear is the smallest garment you own, why skimp there?! I don't think my packing is perfect, but it's pretty pared down, I don't fill my rollerbag and backpack, and I use pretty much all the items. Having two pairs of shoes has saved me so many times because I often get my shoes wet because dew and rain; the lightweight shoes that people suggest, like a set-up where you wear sneakers and bring sandals, is impractical - I'm not going to hike in sandals. I also feel like the idea of "if you are missing it, you can buy it" is not a great idea. I know what they mean - don't try to prepare for an Arctic blast in Arizona and well, if it ever does happen, you can go into a shop and get a sweater. But it gets carried way too far, and the strategy of achieving lighter luggage by essentially buying stuff at the destination and then trashing it (or donating it) is wasteful and not economical.
I decided that for the birding trips I'll just keep on with my roller bag + backpack, and got a short-haul kind of backpack. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I test-packed it and like it a lot so far, and it's surprisingly roomy for 28L, so I'm excited. It fits under the seat, it is clamshell style, and has several zippered pockets for organization, and I plan to retire my North Face one from travelling. That backpack remains my work/commute one, since top-open and tiny is good for daily, but it's eventually became so irritating for travel that it kicked off this entire Luggage Thoughts and Purchase cycle. (Seriously, I would put binoculars + camera + 1 shirt + 1 pants + 1 waterbottle in, and then I would have to start forcing things into it.)
