Day 12 - Travel

I am getting close to my 15 days of micro blogging right now. I am concerned about the next few days because… I will be traveling. 🧳

One Bag Travel

I have become a huge fan of one bag travel. I really do not like to check bags and I am likewise concerned about not being able to get my bag onboard in an overhead bin.

That was when I came across James Clear’s post on one bag travel.

Ultralight Packing List: How to Pack Light & Travel With 1 Bag (jamesclear.com)

I spent a lot of time revamping my wardrobe and getting super efficient. For example, I have a hairbrush that is about the size of half a Pop-Tart. It lays flat and slips over my ring finger and works great.

I also got into wrinkle-free athletic dress clothes. shop.bluffworks.com is my favorite. But last year I needed to upgrade from a 20L pack to something that would hold my mobile office (all my devices) and my clothes.

I did a ton of research and discovered that since I first discovered ultra-light travel in 2019 (hard to believe that was 6 years ago), there has been an explosion of discount bags on Amazon (or AliExpress) from China. Most of these are done in set runs and then sold online until they run out, so links from articles often don’t work.

However, if you search, you can find really functional bags in the $30 to $80 range.

However, I noticed that four out of five reviewers had personally bought the same bag. What bag? The Cotopaxi Allpa 35L. Once I discovered this bag was available at REI and I could go check it out in person, I boogied down to the REI in Denver to check it out. I was hooked right away.

This saggy-looking thing is shockingly functional, and it is now the only bag I travel with and I have taken it all over the world. It is the first bag to bump my Tumi backpack and roll on.

Aside: Ever since Samsonite bought Tumi, I have been underwhelmed with their products. They are basically taking the same designs and respinning them with cheaper fabrics and colors. The lifetime warranty is gone, and the quality with it. Thanks, Milton Freeman. Who would have thought that making the only purpose of a company to generate profits for shareholders would lead to companies destroying long-term value to create short-term profits? It’s like the hedge funds bleed the value out of a business, then discard the empty husk of a company and move onto the next prey when their current victim, err, investment runs out of blood. But maybe I’m being overly cynical, and this just creates new opportunities for new ideas. It worked for Warby Parker and Dollar Shave Club. Meanwhile, back to your regularly scheduled program.

So what makes the Cotopaxi so special? A few things:

Space-wise, it is about the same as a 20-inch roll-on.
The interior has zippered pockets, so it’s like it has its own built-in packing cubes.
It has some cool features, like zippers that tuck up behind loops, making them theft “resistant“. Someone cannot “casually” unzip the laptop pocket, for instance.
And it has a laptop pocket.
But my favorites are the two front pockets, one small, one HUGE.
It has an elastic water bottle holder on the side.
It has heavy-duty shoulder straps AND a hip belt, all of which can be stuffed into pockets and hidden away.
It has handles on the top, bottom, side, and back - so you can pretty much grab it from anywhere and get a good grip, and the back handle lets you slide it over a roller bag handle and stay put.
It has loops on all four corners, which are perfect for carabiners. Yeah, sometimes I strap things to the outside of the bag.
The build construction is two shelves. The zippers are heavy-duty, and the stitching is robust.

If you don’t pack it full, allegedly it will fit under a seat, but I have never tried it. I find that the two front pockets and the laptop pocket perfectly hold all my “gadgets.” Notebook, pens, battery bank, charging cables (this keyboard), power adapters, pens, Remarkable, it all fits. And I can pack a week’s worth of clothes in the thing.

It can be heavy to carry because I overload it, but I love it. And then I have one bag to worry about. They come in a variety of colors. Cotopaxi is famous for reusing high-quality fabrics and remnants. I chose black because… well, I wimped out. I wish I had picked out one more colorful. I had this goofy idea that a black back would be more suitable in a business environment, but I have yet to meet anyone who cares what your backpack color is.

But, one of the things I read over and over again is that the reviewers bought this bag because they could “live out of it,” and I have done the same. When I get somewhere, I rarely unload it; I just take what I need and go.

There are a few small additions that I made to the bag:

Highly optimized toiletry kit. (It’s about as big as my battery bank.)
A super tiny REI daypack that fits into its own pocket.
A super tiny “Laundry bag” to keep dirty clothes separate from the clean ones.

And over the years, I have built up a selection of travel gear, things I put in my closet that are meant to go in this bag so when it’s time to go, it doesn’t take long to pack, and I don’t have to think much about it.

If you decide to get into the one-bag travel world, I welcome you and wish you luck. The rabbit hole is deep but not dark. It seems to be populated with other souls who love to travel and want to do it efficiently and without needing to track multiple bags.

10:55 a.m.

New experiment: Using Instagram stories to track my trip with pictures. Haven’t done that before.

Oh, I left my DJI microphone behind. Rats, that thing takes such good audio! But, it’s fine. I can still film if I want.

Dailyish - A Day of Family.

There’s this great story in the book The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman. He interviewed Jerry Seinfeld about his advice for writing jokes. The world-famous and beloved comedian famously told a newcomer, (I paraphrase) “Write a joke every day and then mark it on the calendar. Then don’t break the chain.” What is surprising is that Seinfeld says he thinks the advice was stupid. To paraphrase the interview, the advice was dumb to him because it just seemed obvious that if you wanted to become a comedian, you should write jokes every day. It would be like training for a marathon. How do you get better by not running? The advice was dumb because it should have been obvious. You practice a lot.

However, the way the “internet” (the new them and they) took it so literally, you have apps, and websites, and people advocating don’t break that chain. And what all of these well-intentioned, but likely misguided efforts have in common is this.

You can be creative by being mechanistic. In other words, forcing yourself to be creative, and
You absolutely must maintain the chain at all costs. As if the ritual holds the creativity, not you.

When stated this way, both of these things end up being patently false. What’s more, they both point to the idea that force of will and self-discipline are the only ways to overcome resistance, procrastination, and our limitations of being human.

I like Burkeman’s idea that while we do want to practice, just as Seinfeld observed, being a slave to a routine is just another form of trying to force control on an unpredictable world. Burkeman suggests that instead of forcing ourselves to do something with slavish, (dare I say mindless) discipline, we are better off doing things Daily-ish. Mostly Daily. We make the effort. We plan to do it, but we give ourselves the grace to allow that circumstance or life itself may have other plans for us.

If you are Christian like me, or adhere to some other religion, you could say that God has other plans, and they might be worth listening to.

However, the most effective model I have found is what I call The Tango. Last year when I was at the Global Leadership Conference for the Entrepreneurs Organization in Singapore, I attended a wonderful breakout session by a Russian immigrant who had moved to Paris. She taught a room full of business owners how to dance the tango. Well, not really. But she taught us a model of communication based upon not only trying to share your truth, but to be completely present as other people tried to do the same.

And in the Tango, there is this beautiful play where, sometimes you lead, and sometimes the other person leads, and this is done by feel.

After reading Burkeman’s book, and learning about his concept of approaching tasks that are daily-ish, I decided I would try to treat each day as a Tango with life. I have some plans, moves I want to make, but I need to be open and pay attention when life wants to lead.

And one thing I have learned in this 15-day experiment in writing is that posting every single day is not likely sustainable for me in the long run. However, I could see to posting on a much more frequent schedule, and what’s more I can see the value in not focusing so much on posting answers, but posting questions. When I only share answers, there is little room for conversation. When I share questions, areas I am researching, there is more room for conversation. And in truth, since I have started this blog - I have had more interesting conversations with people about kids and video games in the last five days, than I have had in the last five months.