Travel gear
October 7, 2014 at 9:47 PM by Dr. Drang
As I type this, I’m sitting one of the comfy chairs in the Southwest terminal at Newark Liberty International Airport.1 It’s one of the chairs with armrests and electrical outlets. The outlets next to this chair are dead, which would be a shame if my phone battery were close to dead and if I weren’t prepared. I try to carry as little as possible on business trips, but I never leave without the essentials.
The essentials change from one trip to the next. On this trip, I had to bring steel-toed shoes, safety glasses, a hard hat, a hundred-foot steel tape, and a measuring wheel, none of which are part of my normal kit and none of which are likely to be of use to you. The more universally applicable pieces of equipment are:
- My Apple iPhone charger and a Lightning cable. If I’m going out and back in the same day, I don’t bother with the charger. I won’t use on those trips because because I carry…
- A Griffin car adapter. I bought this back when it wasn’t all that common for cars to have USB outlets. I don’t use it as much nowadays, but I still pack it because it’s light and some rental cars don’t have USB. Charging your phone while driving is especially important when you’re using it for driving directions, because the GPS and mapping app can really suck up the battery when cell phone towers are scarce. The few times I’ve forgotten to bring it and have had a USB-less rental, I’ve depended on…
- A Jackery Bar battery charger. Jackery’s been advertising heavily this year, and when it came time to replace my old Eneloop Mobile Booster after four-plus years of yeoman service, I succumbed and bought the 6000 mAh version. It’ll charge my iPhone 5S four times from near death and seemed like the sweet spot in the bulk/capacity tradeoff. I usually charge it overnight in the using the Apple charger and…
- A short micro-USB cable. I have a few of these that came with various devices. The one I pack for trips is the shortest one, which came with…
A Logitech UE Bluetooth speaker. The Jambox is the canonical device in this category, but I bought this on the Wirecutter’s recommendation and have no complaints. It’s plenty loud for a hotel room and when I’m doing chores inside the house or garage, but its sound does get lost if I take it outside.
From a packing space point of view, a speaker is something of an extravagance compared to earbuds or portable earphones, but I prefer listening through speakers and the Logitech is pretty small. Unless I’m out for several days, it won’t need recharging. The same is true for…
- A 6″ Kindle. I bought the previous generation for $19 a few months ago when Amazon was running a short-lived special. It’s not a Paperwhite, it doesn’t have a touchscreen, it doesn’t have a 3G connection, and it displays “special offers” (ads) when I’m not reading. But it was $19. And it has hardware buttons for page-turning—two on each side—which is, in my opinion, the best design for a single-purpose device like this.
I also bring my trusty late-2010 MacBook Air, but I can’t say it was bought primarily for travel, although travel was one of things I had in mind when I chose it. And, on strong recommendations from Merlin Mann and Katie Floyd, I carry a 32 GB Tuff N Tiny USB flash drive on my keyring. I’m not sure that counts as a travel device, either, as it’s always with me.
As I was trying to figure out how to close this piece, a guy in one of the comfy seats across from me (where the electrical outlets work) asked if anyone had a Lightning cable he could borrow to recharge his phone. Sweet guy that I am, I handed him mine. But if he “forgets” and tries to pack it up with his things, there will be blood.
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