And now, a few days later than I intended, are the results of the packing experiment that I outlined in my .
I just returned from a whirlwind business trip (got home last night) to southern Spain and Morocco during which I would need to dress somewhat formally for meetings, and a few days before I left, I heard an interview on NPR with the founder of OneBag.com, a sort of self-help guide to the overpacker.
As anyone who has been paying attention to the latest shenanigans of cash-strapped airlines knows, advice on how to pack for a length trip using only a carry-on roller back is about to become golden, given that American Airlines announced this week that they intend to start charging passengers to check baggage. That’s right, $15 for one bag, $25 for the second (for a total of $40 — each way — if you want to take two bags with you). In other words, one of the US legacy carriers has decided to take inspiration from RyanAir, Europe’s rock bottom low cost carrier, and charge you to take luggage on board the aircraft.
Soon, I imagine, they will install coin-operated turnstiles at the entrance to the jetway, and passengers without exact change will be unable to board the aircraft (or exit it). Also, you’ll need to bring your own cup on board for sodas. As a casual business traveler who makes a few trips each year, my response will likely be typical of most travelers: I shall avoid American Airlines when possible (I notice that Northwest is considering following suit, which is fine with me because I never fly them. I make a habit of avoiding airlines whose employees actively hate working for them).
Anyway.
OneBag.com encourages the idea of bundling your clothing (handy chart here), which I illustrated in my 12 of 12 post to a number of intrigued comments. The whole idea is that you bundle clothing together in a way that minimizes hard creases so that wrinkles don’t set in. The OneBag.com guy (whose name I don’t remember and am too lazy to look up) says that folding each item of clothing individually and packing it in stacks is about the least space-efficient thing you can do, and it pretty much guarantees that every item of clothing will arrive at its destination with sharp creases in it. I can definitely attest to that, so I was willing to give it a shot.
Several of my commenters raised the point that the disadvantage of bundling your clothing is that if you’re on a multi-stop itinerary, you have to un-bundle and then re-bundle at each stop, because the only way to reach stuff on the inside is to undo the entire bundle. This is true. For me, it wasn’t a concern on this trip because I had two meetings at my first destination, Sevilla, from which I would return to Madrid for the night, fly to Morocco, and then, at my destination in Morocco, there would be a laundromat, where I could wash all of my clothing. Hence, I really only needed to pack for Sevilla, and then have a set of travel-ready clothing for the last night in Madrid — once my clothes were washed in Morocco, I could then re-pack for the second half of the trip.
So, let’s off to Spain!
I had two bundles, packed into a large Samsonite suitcase that looks like every other large Samsonite suitcase out there, which I checked with Delta Air Lines because they don’t charge for bags yet. (They have, however, dropped their maximum weight to 50 lbs, even for international trips.)
The day I left, my luggage was loaded into the trunk of my car, hauled down to the Austin Airport.
From Austin, we flew to New York on a regional jet:
In New York, we had a three and a half hour layover before we flew to Madrid.
To our surprise — and clearly to the captain’s — shortly after we started taxiing out toward the runway, he came on and made the following announcement: “Well, folks, usually at JFK around this time in the evening, there’s quite a bit of traffic. We’re used to being 30th in line for takeoff. Tonight, however, we must have pushed back at just the right time, because we’re number 4 in line for takeoff. We’ll be airborne shortly — flight attendants, please be seated.”
Thus freed from waiting in line, we took off and flew across the ocean and landed in Madrid almost an hour early.
From Barajas Airport, we took a taxi to the Puerta Atocha train station, where I tried in vain — unsuccessfully — to get us on an earlier train to Sevilla. We were at the train station a little before 10 am, and I had booked us on the 1 pm train, since we weren’t originally supposed to land before 9:30. However, it’s apparently somewhat difficult to change return tickets on the AVE — Spain’s high speed train — so instead we sat with our luggage and drank repeated cups of coffee in the old section of the station, which has been converted into a large atrium.
At 12:30, we reported to the appropriate platform and hauled our luggage into the overflowing luggage rack for the two and a half hour trip to Sevilla’s Santa Justa Station.
In Sevilla we (I) collected the rental car, threw the luggage in the trunk, and, after several sweaty moments with cars honking behind me and a gate that wouldn’t open, managed to figure out how to put a Pugeot into reverse (pull up on the ring under the gear shift knob), ran back into the station, got another ticket for the gate, out into Sevilla traffic, and following the voice of our uptight British-accented GPS, arrived at the Ibis Hotel Sevilla, where, after yet another round of swearing at the car, I finally managed to get into the shower, wash off 24 hours of travel, and see the results of the bundling experiment.
Bundle number 1.
The only major casualty in bundle 1 was this shirt, which had nicely defined creases in the lower section. In all fairness, this probably means I didn’t pull them out when I bundled the shirt in the first place.
Bundle 2:
Bundle two was the less secure of the two, as it was on top and overlapping the other slightly.
For a linen shirt, this is nearly perfectly pressed after being in a suitcase for two days.
My Brooks Brothers Shirt has quite a bit of wrinkling – the nice thing about Brooks Brothers stuff is that the wrinkles hang out overnight. Still, this one’s a bit of a mess. So were these trousers:
As I hung these up, I realized that I had made what was, in all actuality, a bit of a blunder in choosing a suitcase — it was much too large, and only about half full, with the two bundles secured by the straps. I chose it because it has four wheels instead of two, knowing that I would be traveling around airports and train stations, and four wheeled suitcases move much easier. However, this also gave the bundles — especially the one on top — far more room to bounce around and loosen, and thus form more wrinkles. I’ll need to give this a try when the bundles are much more securely packed and see how that works.
