Noticed some minor updates here.

Of interest to our audience - on the "allowed" list:


Tools (seven inches or less in length)
Screwdrivers (seven inches or less in length)
Wrenches and Pliers (seven inches or less in length)
Scissors - metal with pointed tips and blades shorter than four inches
Eyeglass Repair Tools - including screwdrivers.

For what it's worth, my airport carry kit now features the following goodies, all of which make the cut, if you get my drift.

1 pair of shorty scissors (4" total, pointy)
1 Swisstool Mini-Tool Thingy
1 Pair of Medic Shears
1 Pair of nail clippers
1 6" crescent wrench

I carry an empty1 liter water bottle with me, and fill is past security.

Additional airport kit items you'll like having:

1. Burt's Bees Brand Bar Soap. It's a shampoo! It's a Shaving Creme! It's a Body Soap! - one bar of soap covers many bases - and it keeps the liquids in your kit to a minimum.

2. A small towel. The joke in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was "always have a towel" and it's actually great advice.

3. Money. Don't leave home without it.

That's all for now. I'm off to Chicago for a 1/2 hour meeting Thursday (really) and I'll let you all know how things are at the frontlines of the whole security process.

Tell me more about Burt Bee's Bar Soap. Which version is supposed to be shampoo/shaving cream/regular soap? This sounds like something that would be a good idea to keep in the BOB as a backup.

Craig.

Could someone decode this and tell me if it means I can bring a Leatherman? I'm assuming my CRKT 3" folding knife is still verboten. -Gary

Most Leatherman multi-tools have a knife that disqualifies them. For those that would like to carry a multi-tool, Leatherman has recently come up with the Knifeless Fuse.

Unless you've removed the knife blade & probably the wood saw blade the Leatherman needs to stay with the CRKT <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I figure we'll be able to buy one lightly used and only siezed once within a month of them hitting the street from the TSA auctions. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> Remember, you are still at the mercy of people who got turned down by real law enforcement and (para)military agencies. .

Maybe I missed something - why not take what you want and check your luggage?

I've never used it myself, but I asked Mr. Google about it, and he said this about just one of Bert's soaps. You will find more to choose from on the website...

Airport employees were stealing stuff out of luggage prior to 9/11. Now you can't lock them out of it, I'm sure a lot more disappears. "PROVE IT, Sucker!"

And whether or not they 'go shopping' in your checked luggage, all they have to do is send it to Greenland, and you still don't have it with you.

Cynical Sue

Allowing pointed metal scissors comes as quite a surprise to me.

Of course, that's the question, which one of these various Burt's Bees products is the supposed "all-in-one" soluction? None of the sites I have reviewed say anything about that.

Craig.

My guess, and it is just a guess, is that if it will wash your hair (those of you who have hair), it will wash all of you...

I've used whatever brand of bar soap I've had for shampoo and to shave, as well as to bathe. While it's nice to have whatever shampoo you need for oily hair with volumizing for extra body with rosemary mint to enhance my smelling experience, bar soap worked fine on my hair and on my face with hot water to shave.

As a guy who has logged more takeoff and landings (as a passenger) than some commercial pilots, I can tell you why you should avoid checking bags in the way you should avoid a swarm of angry bees.

1. It adds - significantly - to your door-to-door travel time. When I fly, I go with my boarding pass in hand (printed at home or in the office) and I go directly to security. I can and do arrive 45 minutes before my flight - routinely - and make my flight with time to spare. It's more important on the landing part. I get off the plane and keep going. Waiting for your luggage to arrive can be a 45 minute debacle.

2. Lost Bags. They say it does not happen much. It's happened to me more than a few times, most recently when I went to Cyprus and my bags went to Zurich - for FOUR DAYS. I arrived for a business meeting after flying from NY to Amsterdam to Budapest to Cyprus in the same rumpled clothes I was wearing when I got on the plan at JFK the day before. I ended up spending hundreds of dollars to buy new clothes in Cyprus.

3. Stolen Goods. Aside from stories like this , I've also had items stolen from my bags in the past, and you have basically no recourse.

4. Extra Bulk. Lighten up! My family went to Disney for a WEEK and we only packed our rolling carry-ons, nothing more. You don't really need to bring too much, and you can - gasp - do laundry at your destination if you are going to be there a while.

This is the stuff I was talking about. Burt's Bees Shampoo Bar.

Yes, it's marketed as a "shampoo" bar, but it's the same stuff as the shaving soap bar and the body soap, just this one smells different.

"...you can - gasp - do laundry at your destination..."

There are many clothes that are easier to hand wash than others. Tilley for one has a whole wardrobe that can be hand washed in a sink, hung to dry, and will look reasonably neat in the morning. They are expensive, but many of their items have a lifetime warranty...

these may help. At least you know if someone used a TSA key
link

Great stuff from Martin, as usual.



Whenever I travel I carry a few packets of liquid Woolite, a sink stopper, 4mm cord + safety pins (= clothesline), $3-$4 in quarters, and some powdered laundry detergent. This gives me a full range of laundry options from handwashing to machine washing. So far TSA has not had a problem with these items.

If the dress code allows, I only bring 2-3 days of clothes and plan on washing them every couple days. Works well, especially if you don't have to run around in a suit & tie.

Click here for a fantastic site regarding smart travel techniques, including carryon-only and hotel room laundry.

Every baggage thief knows that you can open a locked suitcase in seconds with a simple ballpoint pen. Just push the tip of the pen into the zipper teeth until the separate. Pop the bag open. Take what you want. Close it. Run the locked zipper runner things back and forth until it's all zipped back together again.

Something without zippers like a catalog case or a hard suitcase might help. Oh, and a decent thief can "read" the combination right off of those thumbwheel combination locks in seconds.

I never check bags unless I'm forced to.

Do you guys ship the sharps component of your EDC/PSK or make do without on your trip? I feel naked without at least a SAK on me. So I don't like to fly.

I personally think that the TSA should actively encourage all passengers to carry a pocket knife. Handy for every day stuff. Handy for crash survivors. Handy against terrorists. I think it would be a deterrent. A terrorist might think twice if everyone around them was similarly or better armed. That type of diplomacy worked for us during the cold war. I honestly believe that enough passengers would not put up with a small group trying to hijack a plane any more. Because if that were ever to be attempted again, people will think that they are either going to die fighting or die giving up. And and while there are many, unfortunately, who are willing to die giving up, enough would be willing to die fighting to have a chance to live.

Based on my limited flight experince, I've had three kinds of luggage: carried on, lost and fedexed. I'd send a SAK or my classic LM and a G2 to where ever I'm going, along anything I NEED to have thier. If I can't have a package sent to me at the desk, I look for a better hotel.