I travel quite frequently, usually at least three times a month. Ordinarily, I don’t stay in hotels, or travel by plane; most of my journeys are in various cars and trains. Fortunately, I can fit pretty much everything I need for almost any circumstance on the road into a single backpack that fits almost anywhere.
Once everything is unpacked, it’s pretty amazing to imagine that it all fits into a fairly small pack! Let’s take a look at the essentials:
1. Books. My apartment is full of them, and I’m always in the middle of reading through at least one or two. Even with all my electronics, I still prefer the dead trees that I usually pick up from betterworldbooks.com.
2. A towel. The most massively useful thing a traveler can have.
3. Extra socks, underwear, and a hoodie. These often end up becoming pillows.
4. G-Form sleeve for 15″ MacBook Pro. They dropped one of these from space and the machine inside landed unharmed and functional.
5. MacBook Pro with Retina Display. All the performance of a full-featured MacBook Pro in the svelte form factor approaching a MacBook Air. Invaluable for testing, coding, and art-ing.
6. Hidden in the back is a Verizon 4G WiFi hotspot. I need to be connected wherever I am, so if I can’t find a WiFi hotspot, this fills in nicely.
7. Brushes and paint. You’d be surprised what can become a canvas.
8. More brushes, watercolor pencils, and various styluses. On the left is a Wacom ArtPen stylus for the Intuos.
9. Matches. It gets cold in the mountains.
10. On the right side of this case are some brushes, a brush iPad stylus, a tiny TenOne stylus, and a super-accurate Adonit JotPen Pro. The proper stylus makes a huge difference when I’m pre-visualizing paintings on the iPad or MacBook Pro.
11. Panasonic Retro headphones. Theses are a good backup when the battery is dead on the bluetooth headset (below).
12. iPod nano. This old companion is a good backup if the iPhone needs to be recharged.
13. Wacom Intuos 5. When an iPad isn’t enough, a graphics tablet on the MacBook Pro is the ultimate portable digital painting and drawing rig.
14. Plantronics BackBeat Bluetooth headset. Wireless stereo speakers and phone headset all-in-one. I always have these on, especially when I need to drown out the endless chatter of the train.
15. Headlamp. Hands free light anywhere I need it.
16. Power supply for MacBook Pro. It’s a power supply.
17. Griffin iTrip. This is the surefire way to connect my iPhone to any car stereo, or the alarm clock radio in any room.
18. iPhone 4S in OtterBox Defender. The iPhone is my number-one tool for keeping in touch with work and arranging travel, couches, etc. when I’m on the road. If I break it, I’m sunk, so I keep it safe in an OtterBox.
19. AirPort Express base station. It seems that the farther west I travel (until I hit the Rockies), the more likely it is I’ll be crashing with someone with a DSL line hooked up to a single computer. The AirPort gives me a hotspot anywhere—and a good opportunity to evangelize the wireless household.
20. Poncho. It seems to rain wherever I go for some reason. This poncho keeps me and my gear dry.
21. iPad charger with Dexim Visible Green cable. I’m a sucker for flashing lights (and carnivals), but this cable is actually useful if I’m busy and need to know whether my iPad is charged up or not. I can tell from across the room thanks to this glowy contraption.
22. iPad in Griffin Survivor case with TenOne Fling. My iPad is a trusty companion, and I use it constantly to display reference photos, conference with work, and to play games since I left my Nintendo DS on a train a while back. The Survivor case keeps it safe from paint splatter, coffee, and drops; the Fling’s physical interaction makes playing games so much easier.
23. This is the second NATO rucksack I’ve had over the past 20 years. They’re cheap, durable, and even have a secondary sleeve attached to the back that fits my Mac and iPad snugly. I keep everything in sleeves or cases, though, because this canvas pack offers no protection against shock or liquid. It’s still a good value from any Army Navy surplus store.
24. Dual-source dual-USB charger with dock connector cable, mini-USB, and micro-USB cables. This plugs into a 12v car adapter or a 120v AC wall plug, and has two USB ports to charge a couple devices at a time. It won’t charge an iPad, but my phone, projector, headset, and hotspot can all get topped off whether I’m waiting in a train station or riding down the highway.
25. Toiletries. I don’t like using other people’s toothbrushes. It’s just gross.
26. Cinimin Swivel pico projector. It’s fun for tossing a huge netflix screen up on the ceiling, but I usually use this to either project a composition on a large surface, or to expose painted-on-photo reactive material with a negative image to integrate it into a painting.
27. Canon G10 camera. If it’s good enough to follow photojournalists into war zones, it’s good enough for me. I’ve been a fan of Canon’s G series for a while; for my money, they’re the best fixed lens cameras on the market.
28. Bedroll & Belts. I don’t always get to choose where I sleep, and my pants don’t always fit. Two birds with one stone, this.
