Travel System 4.0
It doesn’t take much to kick off a bold and stupid new travel scheme. My injured knees cried just thinking about carrying a giant hostel geek bag with me or a mountain of sorority girl luggage. I started mixing and matching the ideas I’ve accumulated about ultralight wilderness survival and arrived at a dangerous scheme. One set of clothes. One set of backup clothes. Everything for the next two months had to fit into a small school bag.
Now it should be noted that I am not the first. It was the legendary Steve March who first attempted this scheme. He stunned us by arriving in Germany with a single tiny book bag slung over one shoulder. At one point while we were ranting about some philosophy or other he interjected with, “here, I’ve got it right here” and somehow managed to get his hand down into the bag and extract the very book we were discussing. He fit books into that crushed, squeezed, compressed airless space! The tardis-like capacity of that bag was going to be difficult to beat. It should also be noted that his part in that particular trip only lasted two weeks. I could do better.
The worst part of the project, as always, is my need for heavy equipment. As I may have to do work on the road I need my MacBook Pro. Compared with so many other options, like netbooks, this thing is like carrying a fat, screaming, hungry child down every street. Alas, I need his power to run the apps I use to build and test software and the keyboard to allow my hands to survive constant blogging.
Fortunately, modern technologies lend a hand at every turn. I used zip lock bags to compartmentalize everything because I can squeeze them down to remove excess air and still clearly see what’s inside each. Alpine cord aka parachute cord is incredibly strong, waterproof and light. With knot skills (yes, I’m pitching this again. learn them!) this stuff can be better than duct tape and it’s incredibly important for the wash scheme. Maglight now makes a tiny AAA battery sized light. An umbrella is an incredible new discovery of mine. Quick drying fake Nike shirts are available for about $3 on the student street if you get them quickly before the venders flee. Nice quick drying pants, on the other hand, cost almost as much as my flight.
I was really daunted by the clothes. I needed ultra light, fast drying gear. The fake Nikes and travel underwear were already in hand but the pants and socks were an issue. I stopped by one of the large new malls, Wanda Plaza, in Fuzhou and was stunned to find all kinds of high end American brands. There was even a J. Crew with quick drying pants… for insane prices. I couldn’t believe it and was convinced they were more expensive than in America! That means that they were expecting enough Chinese people to have reached a level of wealth that, given the exchange rate, they could pay more than 6.5 times as much for a pair of pants! Literally almost the cost of my monthly rent! Then I made another discovery.
I went home and started looking for clothes prices online. It turned out that… good equipment like camping/travel pants really were that expensive. How could I be so far off? Then I got it. I hadn’t ever paid the actual cost of clothes. Everything I wear is second hand or bought by sleeping overnight with a line of grizzly rock climbers on the lawn behind a loading doc at REI. If you sleep over and wake up early enough in line the next morning, you can rush under the slowly opening garage door and find pants for $5.40. You have to be willing to replace a button and stitch up a hole but hey, I’ve got a twenty five cent sewing needle. The fact that those very pants, on the other side of the wall, cost $100 eluded me.
So I caved in on the pants. It was heartbreaking. I found a North Face store (Yes! This blew my mind too! There is a North Face store in Fuzhou?!) and spent hours picking exactly the right pair.
The socks were trickier. I realized that what I needed were tiny, super thin socks that would dry instantly and weigh nothing. Joan Blainey sent me a really nice pair a while back so I knew what was possible but not how to find them. At last I went out and bought the cheapest dress socks I could find, knowing they’d be all polyester and no cotton to slow drying. At the last minute I did one better and found tiny dress socks made out of, if I was willing to believe my translation of the label, bamboo fibers. I love the fact that they’re bamboo so much that I’ve tricked myself into loving the socks. They also weigh as much as a nose hair and cost about two dollars, one for each sock.
And yes, at the last minute I really did cut the cord off of my battery charger and patch it back together with duct tape to save weight.
The Scheme
The scheme works like this: each night I throw that day’s clothes into the sink with a little soap. I wash them and throw them onto an impromptu clothes line using my alpine cord. The next morning they’re dry and I roll them into the bottom of the backpack.
The umbrella does a lot of things, I’ve learned in China, and is worth its own post. But for now I’ll just say this: cool when it’s raining, instant, light, portable shade when it’s not.
How It’s Working
So far it’s been amazing. I love knowing that I have absolutely everything with me. I can wander off, get on a bus and disappear at any time. I can sleep in a park. I can jump on a plane. Meanwhile, moving around the airport is a breeze. I don’t even have to know where the luggage (stress on lug) is. Outside of my big nose, I don’t even look like a traveler as I cruise the subway.
The washing process takes only minutes. These types of clothes are really easy to wash and squeeze out quickly. With a few rope tricks the line is quick and easy. (Easy loop on one end, taut line hitch on the other.) I run the cord through the clothes and throw a loop over the highest end so that they don’t slide down the line.
At the hostel, I can put everything I own in the tiny locker at night. No sweat. I have one more trick, where I carry a large, very light nylon laundry bag so that I can dump out my stuff at night into the bag and quickly sort for what I need without dealing with the tight squeeze in the backpack itself. The bag doubles as a place to unload what I don’t want to carry during the day and I just toss it into the hostel locker as I head out the door.
Lastly… the pants. Oh the pants. They work. I’m a believer. In theory I was a believer before, as my old second pair, with its newly replaced button and stitched bottoms, have always been great. But these new pants feel great, are sturdy and light and yesterday when it was raining… I walked around for about an hour before I thought, hey, how is this umbrella keeping my legs dry in this torrential downpour? I looked down to find beaded water disappearing down the front of the pants. I was perfectly dry inside. Better yet, within minutes of walking into a building… the pants were dry outside too. Sold.
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