Travel gear

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:

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.


  1. Home of America’s Slowest Security Lines™.