OK, so some weeks ago, I posted about being equipped to fly coach. Well, I just got back from a 7-day trip to San Franscisco with my wife, 5 year old son and 9 month old daughter. Once again, an equipped dad makes for a good trip.

As is typical, I shipped ahead a kit of stuff I wanted for the trip, including my leatherman tool and other stuff. We carried on all our other stuff on board, which is good, because there's only 2 types of luggage, carry-on and lost.

Anyway, we stayed at the Marriott on 4th street, a nice hotel, but still we needed a number of things from my kit to make the room tolerable.

First of all, flat duct tape.
My kids take a bath and the drain in our tub was leaky. No problem. Tape sealed the drain fine.
The curtains didn't quite close and being on east-coast time, we were putting the kids to bed at 5:00 PM local. The tape held the curtains closed no problem.

Next, para cord.
It's nice to be able to rinse the puke of your daughter's clothes and hand them up to dry...a few feet of para cord took care of that.

Finally, the room was lacking a nightlight, and my son occasionally needs to get up to pee in the middle of the night. No problem, my Princeton Tec Attitude LED flashlight was left on in the bathroom all night long - didn't even wear out the batteries until after 48 hours run time!

We used other gera throughout the trip, it was great.

What's a gera?

Are they hard to use and do they require any sort of certification?

Bountyhunter

(P.S. Hey, it's late, and I just had a bad dream about an old girl friend, who still writes me since her husband passed away.)

Martin,

My wife always questions me on why I carry paracord. Now I can relate a good use - clothesline for puked-on kid's clothes. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> Thanks for the trip report.