Keen Recycled Materials Harvest Grand Bag

Now that the Earth Day media (and blogger) bandwagon is done for a year, you will see the predictable drop-off in stories about green travel and eco-friendly gear. The world keeps turning and deteriorating though, so we'll keep talking about what does and doesn't help the planet when you are on the move.

I've been trying out one of these cool recycled materials bags from the Keen Harvest collection. The "harvest" name refers to what these totes are made out of: recycled rice paper and "brown haul bag paper." This one is the Harvest Grand, a simple shoulder tote that's like a narrow messenger bag. Inside the flap there's a zippered front pocket, a small interior zippered pocket, a place for a phone/notebook and some pens, and the main compartment.

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Practical Travel Gear is Moving

After nearly four years in this Blogger house, it's time to pack up the moving truck and take the Practical Travel Gear blog to a new home. This gear blog is getting a little tired of being single as well, so it has invited two other people to co-habitate the new digs.

As you've probably noticed, my posting schedule on here can be a bit erratic at times, partly because I spend a good bit of time actually traveling and it's hard to keep blogging hard while researching travel articles in some far-off land with spotty Internet access. Also partly because I've got a lot of other balls in the air with my books, Perceptive Travel, and ongoing travel writing assignments.

So, as of Friday we'll be unpacking boxes at PracticalTravelGear.com. You will notice the new home looks a lot prettier (designed by Jay Phillips) and with it being on Wordpress, we'll be able to future post, add helpful widgets, and basically own instead of rent. No sub-prime loan necessary, thankfully.

I've reviewed close to 300 travel gear items on here, but I'm only one person, a male one at that. So the talented Kara Williams (from The Vacation Gals) will be reviewing women's travel gear as well as useful items for family travel. Videographer and biz travel road warrior John Gordon will help out with all the geeky gadget and productivity devices that I don't have the need or patience to mess with on a regular basis.

I will still run a couple more posts in parallel, but then this version will fizzle out. All the archives will remain here where they are though, so a search for something you read before will still work. Please join us though by clicking over to the new site and subscribing to the RSS feed. There will be three postings a week starting the 4th on. After two months, when the search engines get caught up, we'll post more often.

Thanks for your support!

The Best Rechargeable Batteries

Earth Day just passed. Are you still using regular throwaway batteries?

With a portable battery charger and a set of rechargeable batteries, you can help the planet and save money long-term as well. A minuscule fraction of batteries get disposed of properly, which means a lot of acid and toxic minerals going into landfills every day. In developing countries, you'll also see them tossed by a roadside or getting into the water supply via a riverside.

Wired magazine tested four models of rechargeable batteries in its April issue, snapping pictures on a digital Canon camera and measuring the number of photos per charge. They also looked at charger time, which ranged from 620 minutes down to 13 minutes.

The top choice in the number of photos per charge was actually the cheapest option: the Duracell 2650 mAH, which run about $4 a battery or $15 to $25 for 2-4 batteries with a charger. With a regular charger they took an incredible 10 hours 20 minutes to fully charge, but for an incredible output: 1,377 photos.

The fastest charger was the Energizer 2450 mAH, which only got 693 photos snapped, but charged in just 13 minutes with the included fast charger. I found a great deal on this package at Amazon: for under $25 you get the quick charger, two AA batteries, and two AAA batteries. And it qualifies for free shipping.

In the middle were the Sanyo Eneloop (759 photos per charge, 150 minutes charge time) and the UltraLast Green Pre-charged Rechargeables (781 photos per charge, 90 minutes charge time).

The UltraLast line is interesting though because of the chargers that are available. There's one $25 package on Amazon that has a wall charger, a car charger, and a sleek USB charger plus four of each size of battery. That's a bonafide bargain and in my book that puts it in the lead. I'll take the average performance if you throw that much into the package.

The USB charger would be quite handy too if you're a business traveler or a flashpacker. It takes up less room than the other options and if you're staying at the kind of hotels where you're going to be plugged in and working at a desk, you can just piggyback onto that power supply without the bulk of a wall socket charger.

Search for more rechargeable batteries and items at Gaiam.com

Editor's note: in May this blog will move to its own domain, where I'm be joined by a female gear reviewer and a frequent business traveler. Get ahead of the game by adding that RSS stream to your reader at PracticalTravelGear.com.

Keen Sayulita Smart Travel Shoes

Shoes are always the big obstacle when you're trying to pack light, especially for men. While we're content to make due with less, there's no equivalent to "little black flats" in the male shoe wardrobe and we can't get away with flimsy little sandals when going out to a nice restaurant. So the challenge is to find a pair of travel shoes that look decent enough for a variety of situations, as in any situation that doesn't require hiking boots or dress shoes.

This pair of Sayulita shoes from Keen I've been trying out do the trick quite well. They're light, they're comfortable for walking around a city, and they look good with jeans or khakis. The top is suede and the bottom is reasonably environmentally friendly: recycled polyurithene and renewable cork.

Yes, cork is going to compress over time, but in this case that's a good thing. The base of the shoe ends up conforming to your foot so you get more support than you would expect in such a lightweight, flexible shoe. (The shipping weight for the two of them together is 10 ounces.) I put about five miles of walking on them over four days and they're conforming to my feet like a glove.

The Keen Sayulita shoes come in two colors (brown or gray) and two styles: lace and slip-on. The slip-on version make breezing through the airport easy too.

You can buy them at most online retailers specializing in shoes or travel gear. But check out the Keen Footwear website for a whole range of shoes that are ideal for travelers: toed sandals suitable for rafting or kayaking, the Market Street and Blvd. lines of casual shoes for strolling around town, and the Trailhead line---which includes the great Shellrock hiking boots I reviewed after trekking through Peru. And yes, there are female versions too, because you can't just travel with flats and thin sandals.

Get yours:

Direct from Keen.

KEEN Sayulita Lace Shoe at Backcountry.com


Keen Sayulita at Amazon

Heys Travelmate Sling Bag

Heys is a travel gear and luggage company best known for its very hard but lightweight rolling suitcases---those colorful ones you see whizzing by you in the airport. But they also make a lot of practical travel accessories and bags that aren't hard-sided, including this cool little Travelmate bag that slings over your shoulder.

Think of it as a miniature daypack, a travel purse, a hands-free travel carrier for dads, or a man purse, but the idea is that you can stow what you need in a small bag that doesn't get in the way. It's smaller than a backpack or messenger bag, but large enough to hold the essentials. In my test I managed to fit in the following: trade paperback, notebook, camera, passport, snacks, cell phone, pens, lip balm, and my Chargepod. There's a zippered mesh pocket on the side that will hold a small water bottle.

The Heys Travelmate stays snug against your body so your hands are free---especially helpful if you're trying to keep track of a toddler or push a stroller. If you're not traveling on business and you're on an airline that doesn't sock you for baggage fees, you could check your suitcase and complete the whole trip with just this bag. Then on the other end, it would do the trick for your days of sightseeing.

I have no complaints about the bag itself: it's rugged, well-made, and has lots of pockets for keeping things separated, including one on the front that's handy for things you need to get at often, like money and an ID. The flap on the front is attached with velcro, so you can open it with one hand. One inside pocket is clear and waterproof: handy if you're carrying cosmetics that could leak.

Two of the three accessories that come with it are a different story though and should have just been left out. There's a cheap LED flashlight that was already dead in the model I received and a mirror that's about as clear as a piece of tin foil. The included travel wallet is nice though: the kind that hangs around your neck and goes under your shirt---handy in places where pickpockets could be working the crowd. (The bag itself would be pretty hard to snatch too; it would have to be slashed.)

The regular line of Heys Travelmate bags includes models in 14 different colors, from subdued to very bright. There's also an "exotic" line with zebra and leopard prints or the houndstooth one pictured here. Some of the shades and patterns are too feminine for guys, but there's plenty to choose from.

These bags generally retail for $23 to $30, so they're a good value. They're available in some retail luggage stores. Find out more online or go shopping:

Heys Canada
Heys USA

Solid colors at Amazon
Exotic line at Amazon

TSA-friendly, No-metal Belt from Beep Free

With as much travel gear as I review on here, you'd think more gear would be the last thing I'd request as a birthday present, but I needed a new TSA-friendly belt. So when I told my mom that, she tracked down this model from a company that specializes in these things and scored me the Beep Free Belt.

See, the only no-metal travel belt I have is the Eagle Creek All Terrain belt with a hidden money pocket. That's all well and good when I'm going on a long vacation or a hiking trip, but it doesn't look so hot if I'm going to meet someone at the other end or I don't want to pack a separate belt for going out to a nice restaurant now and then.

With the Beep Free Croco Finish model pictured above, I can look respectable and be respectable too on a business trip: I don't have to do a strip tease for the airport security agents every time I take a flight. I just pop off my loafers, put all the metal into my checkpoint-friendly laptop bag, and I waltz right through the metal detector.

When you check Magellan's or similar sites, you don't find many choices when it comes to metal-free belts like this. Usually there is just one style in either brown or black. On the Beep Free site, there are a variety of styles and colors and you can even choose the belt buckle finish.

Now I won't tell you that this is some elegant, finely crafted belt you would want to wear with an Armani suit. It is around 25 bucks after all. When you get within a couple feet you can tell the buckle is faux-metal and really plastic, but if it really bothers you they sell a real nickel buckle that you can switch out in your hotel room. That way you can still avoid packing another belt for meetings or presentations.

A True Carry-on Bag: Tom Bihn Aeronaut

If you've ever stood in a line of people in the connector between the airplane and the airport, waiting for your gate-checked bag to arrive from the luggage hold, you know that the phrase "carry-on bag" is not a strict one. The Eagle Creek 22-inch Hovercraft bag I reviewed earlier, for example, is technically a carry-on, but only for the largest jets. And if a gate agent ever made me stick it into one of those frames by the gate, no way it would fit.

This Aeronaut bag from Tom Bihn is a different story, as you can see from the airport gate photo I shot above after it was fully packed. It fits easily and it even "meets Heathrow requirements." I used this bag on a four-day trip to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, which it turns out is not a very warm place to be right now, so I had to pack some warm things.

Amazingly though, it holds 45 liters (2700 cubic inches). I packed all I needed for a four-day trip and still had room to spare. I'm talking a pair of shoes, a fleece jacket, four shirts, three t-shirts, three pairs of pants, a bathing suit, two hats, underwear and hiking socks, an extra belt, a deck of cards, a thin nylon daypack, and chargers for my gadgets. It holds far more than I expected when I first loked at it.

It weighs about two and a half pounds empty, which is less than half what any "lightweight" carry-on with wheels weighs. You can pay an extra $20 for a shoulder strap if you don't have one already, but it has regular handles and zip-away straps that make it work as a backpack.

This is one tough bag I expect to put through its paces for many years to come. The best zippers, the toughest ripstop nylon, and made in the USA on top of it. It also works with the Tom Bihn packing cubes I reviewed a few posts back. One size of those fits exactly in the rectangular side pockets that are on both ends of this bag, so you can stuff a lot into those and then pull them out and be organized at your hotel.

This Aeronaut bag is not the cheapest one you'll find, but $180 is still a good value considering the workmanship and quality materials. If you're a road warrior that needs to pack a lot for short trips or you just hate handing money to airlines for rapacious extra baggage fees, this can be your "one bag" you can use for every trip. It comes in three colors and you can buy it in Tom Bihn's Seattle store or direct from the Tom Bihn site. Highly recommended.

[Editor note - changed purchase text per comment below: Seattle-only retail availability. Buy online.]