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Lani Teshima:
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Travelite Packing Tips

September 2000:

Greetings!

What happened to August? I thought I sent out an August Travelite Tip, only to discover that what I sent to you was an erroneous email meant for a different party. How embarrassing. That I didn't get barraged with angry spam email is most appreciated. Thank you!

Some of you actually emailed me and wanted to know what the ticket was for. For the second year in a row, I attended a week-long art festival called Burning Man, held out in the Nevada desert. I really can't explain it, but you can go to the official Web site at http://www.burningman.com to get a better sense of it. It's been referred by 10-second sound-bite media types as a "Mad Max meets Woodstock" event, but it's not like anything else I know. It's certainly not like an outdoor music festival, since for Burning Man each attendee must bring every bit of survival necessity needed (beginning with two gallons of water a day). Let's just say that going to Burning Man is like traveling to another planet and becoming its resident for a week. If I ever put together my own Burning Man trip report page, I'll email you its URL.

I *do* practice my Travelite skills for Burning Man, mostly because we have to pack sleeping bags, tent, a week's worth of water and food into the little Ford Festiva that I own (but hey, it's paid for!). At some point, I'll probably even put together a page on packing tips for Burning Man! :)

My apologies for not sending out an August tip. Between getting married, going to Burning Man and other such activities, I guess I've been distracted. I've also joined a family vacation-planning Web site as its travel writer/columnist. As the name suggests, MousePlanet.com (http://www.mouseplanet.com) focuses for now on amusement parks such as Disneyland. My column, "The Trip Planner," appears there monthly.

If you traveled by air this summer, I hope you didn't get tangled up in the mess with United Airlines. I've been a Mileage Plus member for many years, but fortunately didn't fly at all this summer. If I needed to, I may very well have chosen another airline. Delayed flights, cancellations, re-routings -- what a nightmare! If you did suffer travel problems, I hope you were able to travel light, helping save you the worries of lost luggage, or lugging suitcases hither and yon as you tried to get to your destination. It's so much easier to use your one carry-on bag as a pillow (looping your arm through a shoulder strap for security) than to try to keep your eye on all your suitcases while you wait for the next available flight.

I promised you that my next edition of the Travelite online magazine would focus around Palm handheld organizers for travelers, and I haven't forgotten about it yet! I recently went WYSIWYG in my Web design by finally getting a copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver -- awesome software, but I'm still learning it. My desire to tinker with the Travelite site has led to its pages being truly "under construction" and I want to wait to upload everything at once. I *do* plan on getting it up before too long. I'll send you email when it's up. The site won't change radically, but I'm setting up templates and actually using Dreamweaver's site management feature to keep everything organized. What a concept!

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Show off your Travelite skills!! If you go on a trip with just your carry-on, email me your snapshot! Your winning grin can make the cover of the Travelite FAQ Web site! A picture of you carrying your carry-on, preferably with some recognizable feature in the background would be great! If the photo is already online, just email me with its URL. If you do, I'll automatically give you a link back to your home page (or trip report). Let me know a bit of info (when, where, what kind of bag, etc.) as well. Sound good? Yah!

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More than a few of you have written to me about Kindred Spirits closings its Web site doors, and about your inability to purchase Mountain Equipment, Inc. (MEI) travel packs. Well, I received word that Kindred Spirits is out of business entirely (I'll have to update that), as is MEI, which ceased operating a couple of years ago due to financial difficulties. The MEI line has been taken over by Outdoor Legacy, Inc., whose president, Manzoor Sipra, contacted me earlier this summer. Outdoor Legacy does not have a Web presence, from what I can tell. However you can email them at OLI1MEI@a... (I believe that is short for Outdoor-Legacy-Inc-1-Mountain-Equipment-Inc), or phone them toll free at 1-888-818-3505. They are based in Fresno, California.

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Some women have written to me of the problems they've had in ordering the versatile Infinite Dress, which used to market through a TV infomercial. From what I am told, the company no longer sells Infinite Dresses at all. Although it's not quite the same thing, my recommendation if you're looking for a good dress for your travels is to go with Travelsmith's "Indispensable Black Travel Dress," which now comes in other colors as well. No zippers, buttons or snaps; and while they also lack pockets, the high-waist princess seam means most of us can fit into this and still look good, no matter what our body shapes. I actually own SEVERAL of these (in different colors and lengths) and I wear them to work almost everyday. They aren't cheap (they range from $89 to $109), but none of them have fallen apart on me yet, and they've replaced my office wardrobe! They don't require ironing or dry cleaning, and dry in a snap! You can go to http://www.travelsmith.com, and click on Women's Travelwear to find the dress. Although I've yet to try one, L.L. Bean (http://www.llbean.com) has a similar dress it calls its "Go-Anywhere Travel Dress," as does Magellan's (http://www.magellans.com), with its "Paragon Dress." The Go-Anywhere runs from from $69 to $79, while the Paragon in short sleeves is currently on sale for $59.00 (reg. $78.00)

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You've already heard me rave about self-sealing plastic baggies. Two companies, Ziploc and GLAD, have introduced new styles, both of which are pleated. Ziploc, which makes those great two-gallon bags for packing your clothes in, sells two sizes of its new "EZ-Fill" style: one in half gallon, the second in 1.5 gallon. These baggies are made of the same type of soft, pliable plastic the regular Ziploc bags are made of. The 1.5-gallon baggies are not quite big enough to pack your clothes in, but you can easily bag up a couple of nice lightweight shirts. If you need to keep an outfit clean, this is a nice way to go. The half gallon would work well for things like lingerie and socks.

GLAD calls its new model the "Stand & Zip," and stand it does. The plastic is more of the "crunky" type (doesn't really crunch, and it's kind of crinkles a bit). The seal is a little hard to zip up, but the GLAD Stand & Zip has no trouble standing up because of the hefty plastic. The pleated Ziploc EZ-Fill baggies are too flimsy to do this. Unfortunately, the hefty plastic makes the GLAD bags a bit awkward to pack into a travel bag. The smaller of the two sizes (quart size and half-gallon size) actually makes a really good toiletry bag, assuming you can ensure that seal. You can guarantee waterproofness, you can write your name on the baggie, the baggie is transparent, and it stands up on your bathroom counter when you need to go through it. I wouldn't recommend it for much else, travel-wise, though.

If you do want a heftier self-sealing bag for toiletries, Brian Jernigan recommends SealLine waterproof map cases!! Near as I can tell, they have all of the benefits of a regular self-sealing bag (although these don't stand up), but much heftier. You can go see them at http://www.cascadedesigns.com/sealline/map_case.html.

Oddly enough, GLAD's official Web site yet makes no mention of this new product, although its parent company, Clorox, had an online press release about it. Such is the life of unmaintained corporate Web sites, I guess. In my search for information however, I ran across GLAD's corporate Web site for Australia. Gee, they have a lot of products that aren't sold in the US! One particular item, called the "GLAD Ice Cube Bag" sounds completely intriguing! One of these bags makes 192 ice cubes. Have you heard of these? Are they re-usable? GLAD also has products with nifty names, like "GLAD Tuckaways" and "GLAD Go-Betweens" -- sounds like you folks Down Under got more than just this year's Olympic games!

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For a few years now, I've been promoting the Blistex Lip Tone tinted lip balm as a great replacement/substitute for lip stick when you're traveling. I've discovered another line of great lip balms that are far stronger in color, for those of you who feel that a light tint isn't adequate for your lips. The product line is called "TerraTints," and it's part of the "un-petroleum" line of lip balms by Avalon Natural Products. Good luck finding it in regular drug stores, though. un-petroleum is marketed primarily as an eco-friendly product, and is sold in health food stores.

For lip balms, these aren't really cheap; they retail for around $4.00 each. However with several colors to choose from, most of you will find a color that works well for you. The colors are: Adobe (dark orange), Blaze (burgundy), Bloom (pink), Heather (magenta), Sienna (bronze), and Sunlit (light orange). These are NOT matte lipsticks, however. They ARE somewhat shiny and glossy. The good news is that they are SPF 18 to protect your lips, and because they're in a lip-balm form, you don't need a mirror to apply them!

If you can't find a store near you that carries these, you can buy them through MotherNature.com, for $3.39 each. To drive home the fact that these are strongly tinted, the Web site categorizes them under lip COLOR, not lip balm!

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Speaking of cosmetics, I've recommended Paula Begoun's wonderful line of books ("Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me," "Don't Go Shopping for Hair Care Products Without Me", etc.), as well as her Web site, CosmeticsCop.com. I recently ordered her printed catalog, since I don't really trust my computer monitor to represent the true color of cosmetic products. Lo and behold, her printed catalog came with a couple of teeny tiny samples of goodies. Not only was I happy to see this, but I immediately packed them up in my travel toiletry kit. I got two tiny lipsticks (the size of your pinky nail) and two one-ounce bottles of not-completely-filled facial cleanser, although you might get something different. These tiny bottles are hard to come by, and the labels peel off really easily... so I'll be saving these to use later.

Well, I think that's all for this month (of which there is only a week left!). Keep your comments coming, and happy travels! Don't forget to send me your snapshots.

Aloha,

-- Lani

Travelite Packing Tips

September 2000:

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