Pacsafe

I've been a Pacsafe customer since 1999 or 2000, when I got a Pacsafe 75, the forerunner to today's 55, 85, 120, and 140 models. It's a nice piece of added security, but I always hoped they'd expand their product lines.

Eventually, they did, and created a line of travel luggage and items with the same security-conscious mode in mind: handbags, laptop bags, luggage, money belts, etc.

Recently I purchased the Pacsafe MetroSafe 200, because in addition to my awesome Tom Bihn Ego (which is suitably sized for carrying laptops) I wanted to have a smaller bag for every day.

After researching the various Pacsafe bags, I chose the MetroSafe 200 for a couple of reasons: it was just the right size for my preferences (large enough to hold my camera, an extra lens, my cell phone, and a few other things), with side pockets for water, and security features. Here's an overview of the bag:


Exterior view, front. Petite and stylish enough for a woman to use as a purse; nondescript enough for a man to use as a shoulder bag.



The strap is securely sewn to the bag. Although you cannot see it here, the shoulder strap hides two thin stainless steel straps, which prevent slash-and-run snatchings. The other end of the strap attaches to a clip, which allows you clip the zipper also, giving more security. The exterior side pockets, when not in use, can be fastened against the side of the bag.



The exterior side pockets can easily accommodate a water bottle, soda can, or umbrella; when not in use, they neatly fasten flat.



Grab handle on the top of the back of the bag (left). The exterior pocket on the back of the bag allows you to "hide" the zipper (right).



Front exterior view, under the flap. You can see the two front exterior pockets - the smaller, zipper component; and the slash pocket; as well as the security clip. The black squares on the flap are Velcro, which add another layer of security for the bag.


Under the front flap, which is also velcro-secured, a hidden clip allows you to fasten the exterior pocket zippers.



The front interior slash pocket is large enough to fit a rather thick trade paperback.



Front exterior pocket has two smaller pockets with security strips, a spot to stash a pen, and a slash pocket. As you can see from these views, the pockets are spacious enough to hold your favorite personal eletronics.



Should you place your MP3 player inside the front pocket, a cleverly concealed hole allows you to run your earphones through the side of the pocket without compromising security. (left, exterior; right, interior).



Front pocket, interior clip. The interior slash pocket is large enough to hold a CD comfortably.



The rear slash pocket is large enough to easily accommodate a CD or folded map.



The main internal compartment consists of one large pocket with a slash divider. It is wide enough to easily take a can of soda, and deep/tall enough to be able to hold a couple trade-size paperbacks.

Retail cost is around $60, which is a small price to pay for peace of mind while traveling.

Jazz Fest

This weekend is one of the best free weekend music events in the city: the annual Jazz Fest in Grant Park.

Chicago sunset

Rest in peace, at least until you're turned into a museum display

I would've never guess that a museum existed specifically for such a thing, but apparently Springfield, Illinois, is home to the Museum of Funeral Customs. So if learning about ancient funeral rites at the Field Museum just doesn't hit close enough to home, head on down to Springfield and check this place out.

In the airlines' eyes, your seat = a really tiny apartment

Ever wondered why airline seats are non-transferable? Turns out, it's all about economics.

Frommer's new "$-a-day" titles

If, like me, you're a fan of the Frommer's brand travel guides, bid a fond adieu to the "$-a-day" title line. They're being replaced by the "Pauline Frommer's Guide to _" line. Citing fluxes in exchange rates, the weakening dollar, and other reasons, Frommer has simply re-branded one of their most popular series, not eliminated it.

Arthur Frommer's blog qualifies the new books as follows:

The new books are not meant for backpackers. Though they review the youth hostels, the free-of-charge attractions, and the rock-bottom bargains, they are primarily meant for adult travelers seeking a degree of comfort and dignity in their travels. But they are definitely and proudly cost-conscious, and supplement their lengthy discussion of hotels with alternative lodgings: rooms in private apartments, apartments, religious and university lodgings, guesthouses, hospitality clubs and vacation exchanges, and B&Bs.

So if you're a "flashpacker" or simply budget-conscious, these books look to fill the middle ground Lonely Planet and Travel + Leisure.

Random travel tips

- If you plan to send postcards, instead of taking your entire address book, print address labels using a clear, easy-to-read font such as Arial, Times or similar. This has a couple benefits:
1) Once you've used a label, you know you sent a postcard that you had intended to send;
2) It guarantees that the recipient's address with be clear for all mail carriers en route;
3) It removes the chance of having your whole address book lost or stolen.

- If you are taking a tour, and the company provides an itinerary online, copy it into Word or other text-editing program, and edit it before you print it - removing any extra information that you don't need, resize the font and adjust the margins; then print your itinerary on both sides of the paper you use. You'll not only save paper, but lighten your load of papers to take with you.

- If you're going abroad but plan to spend most of your time in a city destination, buy a city-specific guide, rather than a country-wide guide book. City-specific guides tend to have more/better maps, and much more in-detail entries about attractions, restaurants and hotels. Of course, they also tend to be thinner and lighter than full-country guides! Use the internet or your local library to research any day trips you might be interested in.

- Subscribe to a lot of travel magazines and have them piling up around the house? Get a 3-ring binder, and put some tabs in it to seperate regions/locations. Rip out any articles that you feel you want to save, and recycle the rest of the magazine. (Additionally, most travel magazines have their articles available online a month or two after the print publication).

- I like to travel with a notebook - I favor the historic Moleskines. When I know I'll be doing a lot of research for writing, I carry the pocket-size reporter's notebook, but it's almost impossible to travel incognito as a writer when people see you use one of those, so I often use the large lined notebook instead. Before I go, I put important information in the back - emergency contacts, addresses/phone numbers for friends I may be visiting in the area, hotel information, etc. I also carry a glue stick and keep a pair of nail scissors in my toiletry kit; that way I can quickly and easily retain any ticket stubs, etc., in the notebook - thus turning my journal into a pseudo-scrapbook.

Bargain airlines

Bargain/low-frills airlines are filling niche markets and flying to airports that the big ones don't - which may or may not prove successful. In many cases, they've adopted gates at international airports like Oakland or JFK, but they've also begun branching out - either to established smaller airports that previously were mainly served by charter or private planes, or providing the necessary incentive and traffic to help provide new uses for airports that previously served as Air Force/National Guard bases, such as Westover in Massachusetts.

Case in point: newbie airline Skybus has opened service around the U.S. with its hub in Columbus, Ohio. Skybus is offering fares for as little as $10 each way per flight; but those fares are few, flights are limited, and you can't fly direct between any cities Skybus serves except Columbus and the other airports. So let's say you wanted to fly from Hartford to Seattle; you'd have to book two separate flights - one from Hartford (Westover, MA, actually) to Seattle (Bellingham, WA).

Skybus serves:

Boston, MA (via Portsmouth, NH)
Hartford, CT / Springfield, MA (via Westover, MA)
Richmond, VA
Greensboro, NC
Jacksonville / Daytona Beach, FL (via St. Augustine, FL)
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Kansas City, MO
San Diego, CA
Los Angeles, CA (via Burbank, CA)
San Francisco, CA (via Oakland, CA)
Seattle, WA / Vancouver, BC (via Bellingham, WA)

It may not be the airline for everybody, but folks who live or work in these cities may find a cheap and useful alternative to larger, more congested airports. And by combining flights with another low-cost airline, who knows - you might be able to find the flights you want and need at an extremely competitive cost!

Other travel blogs/sites I've stumbled upon

Some random travel tips for the day:

Visit Arthur Frommer's blog (or subscribe to it) for a lot of inexpensive travel tips and suggestions. Frommer's has long been a leader in the travel industry and is a trusted source of information - the guy who first published '__ on $5/day' is still out there, digging up travel bargains!

Frommer's blog also provided a link to Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations. Thought you couldn't afford a "exotic" vacation? Think again. TLCD also recently carried an article about Chicago's own Working Bikes!

At the other end of the spectrum is Globerati, dedicated to luxury travelers. Well, never hurts to dream or drool, I always say; and even if you can't afford the places listed there, they can certainly give plenty of inspiration about future places to visit - not to mention loaded with lots of gorgeous pictures.

There's a blog on the Sydney Morning Herald called The Backpackers. The writers are absolutely Aussie in attitude, and one of the recent articles included a list of some of the wilder festivals around the world, including the Annual Amtrak Mooning in lovely Orange County, California.

If you're a solo traveler, and would like to travel but feel a little intimidated by the thought of traveling alone, check out specialtytravel.com, which brings together information on a huge variety of special-interest tour operators. Special-interest travel is a great way to meet people who share a common bond while traveling - whether it's something like cooking, music, writing, archeology, conservation, or any of dozens of other interests. (Couples are certainly welcome to use the site, too!)

The Green Book

Just finished reading The Green Book. It's loaded with tons of facts (and sources) about making the planet a greener place - and some of the facts are downright staggering. Some examples:

- The average shower uses approximately 5 gallons per minute; the average toilet uses 4-7 gallons of water. 40% of all potable water is used to flush toilets.

- By comparison, the average person in Africa has only 4.5 gallons of water per day to serve for eating, drinking, cleaning, and hygiene.

- At least 1.2 billion people on the planet do not have access to safe drinking water.

- By 2025, the world must increase its fresh water supply by 22% in order to meet its growing needs. Currently only 3% of the world's water supply is fresh water.

- If every American home changed just 5 regular light bulbs to energy-efficient ones, more than one trillion pounds of greenhouse gases would be kept out of the air. That's equivalent to emissions from 8 million cars.

- Using your washing machine on only warm and cold cycles (vs. hot) will save 90% of the energy used.

- 25% of all food produced in the U.S. is wasted, and most of that waste ends up in landfills.

- Disposable pens and razors are generally tossed in the trash and most consist of materials that cannot be recycled. Americans discard over 1.6 billion pens per year - placed end to end, they would reach over 150,000 miles.

- Want an excuse to buy a laptop? Most laptops use half as much energy as their desktop counterparts. Be sure to recycle your computer when you do so, however.

- Have a fish tank and houseplants? When doing your weekly tank cleaning, remove 1/3 to 1/2 of the water in the tank and use it to water your houseplants; you'll have chemical-free fertilizer built right in.

- Disposable diapers account for approximately 3,000 pounds of waste by the time the child is potty-trained. Opt for cloth diapers instead; ideally, organic cotton, of course.

- If everybody who uses an ATM in the U.S. did not take a receipt, it would save a strip of paper over 2 billion feet long - that's enough to circle the Equator 15 times.

- At least 10% of your current electric bill is from items that are plugged in but not used all the time. Use energy strips, and turn the strips off when the appliances/items attached to them are not in use. (ie. TV, VCR, microwave, computers, etc).

- If all answering machines (which use energy 24/7) were replaced by voice mail services, it would save as much energy as removing 250,000 cars from the road each year - not to mention the savings on the materials used to make those machines.

- We currently only harness 1% of the solar energy available to us. Enough solar energy hits the planet in a single day that could meet the energy needs of the entire world's population for 27 years.

Trying out unusual travel products so you don't have to

I have a trip planned a few months away to a country that is notorious for its awful toilets. I've seen pictures, so I know the reports are not unwarranted; but strange foreign lands are not the only place that one may come across less-than-perfect privvies.

Last time I was in San Francisco, for example, my friend and I went out for dim sum, and in the midst of the meal, the call of Nature whispered in my ear. I headed to the bathroom and was shocked at the state of the place; if I wasn't so absolutely desperate, I would've waited. Thankfully when I'm travelling I usually carry antibiotic WetNaps and other items for such an emergency. (Men, you just don't understand what women have to deal with sometimes.)

So, with this trip on the horizon, I decided that there was no way I would deal with this again, and started looking around to see if there was a product that fit what I had in mind. After researching the market quite thoroughly, I finally found the Shewee. (Go to Shewee USA if in the US). Gotta love the name.

What is it? It's a little plastic funnel for women, shaped somewhat like a cala lily, which you can get with or without a bit of extra plastic tubing (and I recommend that you do, if you buy one). How it works is that you hold it firmly in place, and you aim - the tube helps a lot with that. (Men, I suddenly have so much more empathy for you and your lack of aim. Seriously, I do.)

It does take some getting used to, because frankly, women weren't designed to stand up and wee, so your body is busy screaming you're supposed to be sitting down for this! It makes me almost grateful that women sit down for this particular body function.

So a Shewee, a bottle of water to rinse the thing out, and a packet of WetNaps are my new very-happy defense against strange and unclean toilets, and something I would readily recommend to other women out there.

Talking about that lovely piece of equipment leads me on to underwear. Yes, underwear; when you're attempting to pack light, you want to have easy-wash, quick-drying underwear so you only have to bring a few pairs instead of a drawerful.

The first thing I tried was Terramar's "VisaEndurance® Smart Fabric Technology" underwear. I couldn't find the women's variety online at first, and got kind of annoyed, so I bought one pair of the men's, when I found a store that had them on clearance. I figured that I've worn plenty of boxers in my time, so how different can the briefs be? Ha, ha, little did I know - they just don't fit the same as women's undies, because duh, men and women are built differently. (The difference is how they cut across the tops of the thighs, and how they tend to ride low on the butt. Plus of course the extra flap of material up front.)

They fit decently enough, however, so I tested them out, and I will say that they breathe nicely, and dry faster than normal cotton undies. Terramar also claims to wick away moisture better than normal underwear, so I tried them for a gym workout, and I will confirm that yes, they perform well for the gym. So thumbs up for the underwear technology, but women, definitely stick to the women's styles for comfort factor.

Now, several years ago when my dad was still a salesman and always on the road, one year as a gag gift for his stocking, I'd given him disposable underwear. My parents both thought it was hilarious, and the packet was kept (although I don't think ever tested). I remembered that, and went looking to see if they still made them. They still do! So I also tried out disposable underwear, which are made out of a material kind of similar to the material used in hospital gowns or the blankets your doctor gives you for exams, but softer (and they don't rustle when you sit down). They're softer than expected, although certainly no cotton, but I don't feel they breathe as well as other choices. Still, in a pinch or if you have a little accident, they do the job. Also, as somebody who considers themselves environmentally-conscious, I can't fully endorse them without noting the waste of using these, but they are handy at points.

Alas, that's it for my experiments in weird travel gear for the week!

Go fly a kite!

The Chicago Botanical Garden is hosting a kite festival this weekend, Saturday August 11th and Sunday August 12th, from 11am-5pm. Admission is free; non-member parking is $15.

Consider becoming a member of the CBG - a year's membership is $60 for an individual ($75 family) , which gives you free parking. The CBG is one of my favorite places in the Chicagoland area - it's a marvelous place to relax and enjoy beautiful gardens and lovely lawns.