The last red-eye I took before figuring this out was a Newark-to-Lisbon ordeal that left me looking like I’d been air-dried in a dehydrator. I walked off the plane at 7 a.m., caught my reflection in the jet bridge window, and genuinely did not recognize the desiccated creature staring back. Ten hours in a pressurized … Read more
The sun came up at 4:52 a.m. last June, and my campervan turned into a lantern. Six windows, no covers worth the name, and a bedroom that lit up like a display case the moment the horizon cracked. I draped a fleece blanket over the cab seats. I bought a suction-cup blackout panel that surrendered … Read more
There is a specific kind of panic that hits when you unzip a garment bag in a hotel room ninety minutes before a wedding and find your blazer wrinkled like a raisin. I experienced it in full last June, standing in a Courtyard Marriott outside Asheville with my dress shirt looking like it had lost … Read more
The sizer at Gate B14 in Denver has a way of settling arguments. The Frontier agent didn’t raise her voice, didn’t threaten, didn’t even sigh. She just pointed at the welded steel box bolted to the counter, the one stamped 14″ x 18″ x 8″, and waited. My nominally compliant duffel went in wheels-first and … Read more
The text arrived at 11:47 on a Tuesday night, while I was standing in an airport hotel lobby in Philadelphia wearing the same shirt I’d flown in that morning: “Your bag was seen in Cleveland.” Not Philadelphia, where I was. Cleveland. Where I was not, and where no part of my itinerary went anywhere near. … Read more
Three weddings in six weeks, two of them out of state, and one groom who explicitly asked the wedding party to “look sharp, my grandmother will be inspecting.” That was the summer that broke my relationship with the standard rolling suitcase. The first trip, I checked a bag containing my suit and prayed. The second … Read more
It’s 11:47 p.m. somewhere over Indiana, and the man in 23C has been asleep since the cabin doors closed. Meanwhile, you’ve counted the ceiling panels twice, eaten your pretzels with philosophical resignation, and watched the seat map on the screen in front of you like it owes you money. If that sounds familiar, this one’s … Read more
There is a particular kind of excitement that comes with hitching a used popup camper to your vehicle for the first time. Maybe you found a deal on Craigslist, or perhaps you are dusting off a camper that has been sitting in a driveway for two or three years. Either way, the moment you crank … Read more
When my team and I loaded up the SUV for a two-week camping circuit through Utah and Arizona last spring, I had a duffel bag full of power banks, a tangle of charging cables, and a nagging feeling it wasn’t going to be enough. Three days in, somewhere between Capitol Reef and a dirt road … Read more
There’s a particular kind of misery that comes with standing on a street corner in a foreign city while your umbrella turns itself inside out. I know this feeling intimately. Over the past two years, my team and I have chased monsoon seasons across Southeast Asia, sprinted through sudden downpours in Lisbon, and gotten caught … Read more