One-bagging it: Better with wheels

So after my last trip to Europe, one thing I didn't write much about was my attempt at one-bag travel. Well, it was at least what I would call one-bag travel; some purists would say that since I had a carry-on and a personal item, that wasn't technically one-bagging it. Whatever. I was traveling light, and I didn't check any luggage going out on my long-haul flight.

I got really excited about the idea of carry-on only travel as I was planning for my trip. I visited web sites like this one, and this one, and, knowing that I had a trip with lots of legs and travel on all manner of planes, trains, subways, and buses, I was sold.

The premise of one-bag travel is pretty simple — pack really light, and cut out "just in case" items. This is somewhat difficult for me, as I like to be prepared for anything. But when I began planning what I wanted to take on my trip, I found that I could still take the sorts of essentials I like to have (sewing kit, eyeglass repair kit, mini roll of duct tape, enough band-aids for minor surgery) and still have plenty of space in my suitcase. And I did cut out some of the more ridiculous always-prepared items I might have otherwise taken.

The primary way to fit everything into a carry-on is to cut down on your clothing and shoes. I planned to take only two pairs of shoes, plus an odd little pair of lightweight shower flip flop things, and I bought a travel clothesline, sink stopper, and laundry soap sheets to do some wash in the sink (I also planned to, and did, make use of the washer and dryer at our house in Ireland).

eBags Weekender (photo from Amazon)

I also asked for (and received) a new bag for Christmas, and based on the advice of the one-bag experts, I went with one without wheels, the eBags Weekender, a relatively inexpensive foray into the wheel-less bag world. This was a major mind shift for me, as I've always used wheeled suitcases, but I believed the arguments. They were, to sum up: without wheels, your hands are free; without wheels, you don't have to worry about cobblestones in Europe; without wheels, you won't have to worry about stairs; and wheel-less bags are lighter and have more interior space than wheeled bags.

I was all ready for one-bag travel. And then two things happened. One was that I developed a foot problem, and my podiatrist recommended taking my air cast in case I needed it (I did). The other is I came down with some sort of cold/sinus infection/plague just before I left. As a result, I was suddenly lugging around an unexpected air cast and small pharmacopia of cold remedies in my bag, which made it weigh a lot more than I was expecting it would.

(As a disgusting aside: sadly, none of the cold remedies cleared up my illness, even a z-pack...what finally ditched it was throwing up pure stomach acid when I had food poisoning. Nothing burns out your throat-schnoz-ear system faster.)

So, cue me with my heavier-than-expected bag, walking through the various transit systems of Ireland and the United Kingdom. The first annoying thing was that the chest straps that helped make it more stable also made it a pain to take off. So when I was waiting for the subway or on an actual subway car, I'd have to weigh the effort of undoing all the straps against the weight hanging on my back. But the second, far more concerning thing, was all that weight on my back. Turns out, my back is not that strong. As I walked through the endless tunnels of the London Tube system, my shoulders ACHED, and I began to long for wheels — even when I encountered stairs. Said stairs and cobblestones were few and far between when compared to the amount of regular, flat pavement.

The longer I went on my trip, the more unhappy I was about my bag. Everything else worked pretty well. I did laundry in my hotel rooms, and learned the important lesson that things dry much faster if you roll them in a towel after washing them. I discarded a book after I finished it, with a Bookcrossing.com marker in it. I used solid toothpaste and shaving cream sheets and Lush solid shampoo (okay, maybe that last one doesn't count...I use those every day).

I enjoyed not having a ton of stuff to keep track of, and not having to worry about carting around a steamer trunk-sized suitcase. I just really, really, wanted wheels, to the point where I thought about trying to find a store selling one of those collapsible luggage carts to start using on my bag.

Skyway No Weight Ultra (photo from Amazon)

So this year I decided to buy a lightweight wheeled bag. I lusted after the Zuca Pro, but went with the MUCH less expensive Skyway No Weight Ultra. It's only about 2-3 pounds heavier than my eBags backpack, but it has sweet, smooth, ultra-stable wide-stance wheels.

Then I put it to the test. Without an enormous amount of thought put into packing (I took three books, a weight no-no, and too many toiletries and clothes), I took it on the closest thing to a European trip you can do in the U.S. — a six day train trip to Boston. Cobblestones? Not so much, but there were definitely brick streets and stubbly D.C. Metro platform edges. And the Boston T's long subway corridors, punctuated with odd half-flights of stairs, were pretty much the exact equivalent of the London Tube (okay, maybe there wasn't quite as much gap to mind). Thanks to Metro's rampant escalator failures, I also got some experience at carrying it up and down full flights of stairs.

My verdict? Wheels win. Wheels win so much, it's not even funny. It was totally stable on the bricks and platform stubble, and pulled just fine. It has a nice rubber carry handle that I could grab whenever I needed to reach down and carry it on stairs, and because of the light weight, it was no big deal any time I needed to do so. And I popped that sucker up in the overhead train bin with no problems at all.

I'm going to keep my wheel-less bag, as I think there will still be some travel situations where it will be the better bag, and if I do ever need to travel with two bags, having one wheel-less, lighter-packed bag will be really handy. My old asshole-sized carry-on (you know, the one that's just a leetle bit over the appropriate size, which meant I never actually used it as a carry-on) will be the casualty of the new suitcase purchase.

I'm looking forward to one-bagging it again in Europe next year, with wheels. Now I just need a Kindle to deal with that too-many-books problem.

Why I'll still ride Metro

The shock of seeing a Metro train, flayed, mangled, and resting on top of another train, really got to me yesterday. Mentally, I put myself on that train car. I often get on the first car at Silver Spring station, and while it would be rare for me to be going in that direction at that time on a weekday, I still couldn't help but think, that could have been me.

There was a period of time where my gut reaction was, maybe I shouldn't ride Metro. Maybe I should avoid the risk, so I'm not the one on the front car the next time this happens. But then I started doing the math. 12 passenger deaths in the history of Metro, in a system that carries 700,000 people on a normal weekday.

Compare that to driving. From 2002 to 2005, there were 79 driver deaths per million registered vehicle owners. If we held Metro to the same level we held our cars, double-digit deaths every year would be acceptable.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think they're acceptable. I think what happened yesterday was a horrible tragedy, made even more horrible by evidence that there were things WMATA might have been able to do to prevent it, or at least make an impact safer. I'm sad for all of the families whose loved ones didn't make it home, and for all those lives cut short on what should have been an ordinary trip. I hope that the systems that failed to cause this accident are discovered, and that we hold WMATA accountable for fixing them, including giving it the necessary funding.

But unlike a car, multiple systems had to fail in order for this to happen. Between the automatic system that runs the train, the collision-prevention system, the driver with the ability to hit the emergency brake, and the brakes themselves, we'll probably learn in the coming weeks that more than one of these things failed. When your tire blows out on the beltway during rush hour traffic, that's one fragile system failing, and suddenly you and everyone else around you is at risk.

It's been a difficult, sad month for Washington D.C. First the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, and now this shocking accident on our subway system. I wonder how these things will impact those thinking about visiting. I think back to the beautiful vibe that filled the city during Inauguration, and how much our visitors clearly enjoyed themselves, and I wonder what we will need to do to get that back.

The summer after I moved here, my parents brought my grandfather out to visit. He wanted to see the World War II memorial, and he did, but I think he got the most visible enjoyment out of riding the Metro.

I forget about that now, what a thrill it is to ride Metro.

I'm an Ohio native, and grew up firmly grounded in suburban car culture. When I moved here, I felt a downright emotional reaction — a tightening of the throat — at the site of those big vaulted stations, the angular silver trains whisking you underground to museums, monuments, neighborhoods.

I grew jaded, like most who live here do. I began to appreicate the transit system because it allowed me to use my car increasingly less. Metrorail and Metrobus became more about the freedom of moving around the metropolitan area without the anchor of a car. But every once and awhile, I still look up at the curve of the ceiling, and listen to the whine of the train coming into the station, and think, I am underground, and I am going somewhere.

Yesterday's accident rattled my comfort in doing that. It may have rattled some locals, and tourists, completely out of taking Metro. And that's a piece of this tragedy, too.

I hope we see reforms, so this never happens again. But I also hope we remember that it's still safer than the alternative, and I hope we can find a way back to a city where there's more thrill than fear in riding the subway.

The T and other transit

So I'm back from the Freedom Trail, but before I go into that experience, I think I'm overdue for a transportation upddate.

Thus far, I've found the T to be incredibly easy to use, which is remarkable given that apparently it had a massive power outage yesterday. When I rolled into South Station on the Acela, I took the escalator down to the red line, queued up, and bought my pass. Based on my experience with other subways, buying a pass is usually the most difficult thing. But here the menus were extremely clear, and my 7-day pass was $15, which is absurdly cheap.

The system was pretty easy to figure out, although rather than signposting which way is which with the terminal station, the T uses "inbound," and "outbound," so it does take a little more thought to figure out which stairs and escalators to take. Some of the lines branch off in different directions, but the destinations seem pretty clear. 

All in all, I've felt very comfortable riding the T. It's not the cleanest subway system, but it's also the oldest in America, and trains seem to run pretty frequently on most of the lines.

Today, I also got to use my 7-day pass for a ferry ride from downtown to the navy yard at Charleston. Getting out on the water, even just for a little while, was nice, and it got me from point A to point B quite quickly.

Ode to my StationMasters map

So this weekend I was in DC's Golden Triangle district, aka the Golden Carrie is Disoriented district, and needed to walk from a store near the red line stop where I'd gotten off to a non-connected orange line stop. Why these two stops, which are in one place only a block apart, aren't connected by a below-ground pedestrian walkway is a Metro mystery.

At any rate, I had to do a quick map check. One of the helpful Golden Triangle tourism people asked me if I needed help.

"Nope," I said. "I've got it."

And I really did, despite my very fuzzy sense of direction. When I first moved here, this might not have been the case. I was persistently coming out of Metro stations and heading in the wrong direction. But since then, I've discovered the StationMasters map.

If you've come to visit me since then, I probably gave you one. If I didn't, remind me next time. They are the best maps I've encountered for getting around a city because they actually orient you around the way you've been traveling -- by the subway.

Stations aren't marked as some median point on the map (I'm looking at you, Google Maps); instead, every exit is displayed, including the direction you'll be heading in when you make the exit. No more walking a block to discover you'd been heading towards 11th St instead of 9th and instantly marking yourself as lost bait. And each mini-map is oriented around an individual Metro station, which makes the map you need easy to find -- just flip to the Metro stop you used.

As an IA, I think this is a perfect use of information to help explain a physical space. But as a traveler, I mostly just wish StationMasters would take their excellent maps to other cities. They could start with Boston -- I'm heading there in May and sure I'll be walking the wrong way out of the subway without fail.

You can check out the Station Masters map here. They also sell them at the Metro Center Barnes & Noble (and probably other Barnes & Nobles in the area).

Cross-posted at www.carriegarzich.com

Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You

Click To Play

One more Underworld video...although I feel it's appropriate

Mmm... New York? I like you.

So here is the problem with going to New York for the first time ever to see an Underworld concert. The concert was so amazingly mindblowingly awesome that we got up on Saturday and went, okay, what do we do now? Because nothing New York had to offer was going to be as great as that concert.

So we moseyed over to Grand Central Terminal, which was really lovely. It was nice to see all the open space, as it hasn't been sliced into a mall like Union Station, as much as I love Union Station. Then we took the subway to where the subway construction started, and a shuttle bus to Battery Park, where we were going to pick up the ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands.

A bit about the subway and our navigation of New York. MTA doesn't have a decent map posted of the New York subway. The one they have kind of looks like the London Tube map in the 1930s before they figured out that the linear map was the way to go, except they also try to put other geographical features in there to make it extra-confusing. We were able to find this one online which did enable us to get around, sort of.

On Friday, we decided on Josh's advice to walk to the concert in Central Park. It was quite a few blocks but it was a nice walk. We went past Rockefeller Center, stopped for dinner and kept walking. We passed the New York Library, with the lions in the front, as per Josh's instructions. Then we decided to stop for coffee right near the Empire State Building.

So if you know New York you know by now that we had been going in the wrong direction. For about 20 blocks, it turns out, starting somewhere after Rockefeller Center. I looked outside the window of the Starbucks and saw 33rd Street. We needed to enter the park at 72nd. Uh, whoops. Turns out there's more than one New York Library with lions in the front. We had thought it looked bigger in Ghostbusters.

We still had plenty of time to make it to the concert but we were not about to walk 40 blocks there. So we found a subway station and a train going in the right direction and got on. At about this point we're congratulating ourselves on our ability to find our way around a city via the subway, if not on surface streets. We take the DC Metro frequently, and have ridden the subway in other world cities as well. We are subway veterans!

And then the train starts going straight through stops. A lot. Turns out we were on the express train and it didn't stop until 125th. We got off at 125th, took a closer look at all my subway maps, and got on a local train going back in the opposite direction.

So it was a relatively minor deal when the subway stopped earlier than it should have with announcements that there would be a shuttle to Battery Park. In addition to various subway issues, the other lesson learned from New York is that you can't just hop on a ferry and head over quickly to see Liberty Island and Ellis Island. The shuttles are three decks and take forever to load and unload. You can't go up in the Statue of Liberty because of security concerns, so we stayed on the boat and took pictures from there, then got off at Ellis Island, nosed around the museum there a little, and headed back. Somehow all of this took several hours, we were hungry, and our feet were still suffering the aftereffects of the Underworld concert (and walking 20 blocks in the wrong direction) so we decided to bail on plans to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and took the subway back to the hotel.

We had some dinner and then — after another hilarious subway ride in which I thought Melvin had gotten off the train for reasons unknown, when he had, in fact, moved to the seat next to me (I was engrossed in composing a text message that would not get sent until we got topside) — met up with Josh and Kelly for drinks at this very cool place called the Flatiron Lounge. The decor was perfect in every little detail, and they had lots of good jazz and swing playing, with lots of delicious, creative drinks (although expensive, of course). We had a few drinks there and then headed to an Irish pub type place that I cannot remember the name of.

Hanging out with friends was definitely the best part of our Saturday in New York. I guess that's the thing about it — most of the really touristy things are just really touristy, and I'd already seen them a bazillion times on TV and the movies. We had no desire to go to Times Square, for example, although the Empire State Building would have been good to do if not for my raging fear of heights. But New York does have so many great places for eating and drinking.

Which is good, because, if not for Josh and Kelly, we would have probably been better off continuing on to Boston for another night of Underworld.

Trip photos here.