Going on a Journee Pt 4

The Part Where I Built a System

Mar 19, 2026

I know who I am.

I’m the person who already knows the backup plan before the first plan has a chance to fail. Who treats preparation not as worry but as craft. That’s just how I’m built.

When something matters, I want to show up ready for it.

When you book a trip to an unknown destination, that instinct doesn’t go away. It just has to work with less information than it’s used to.

Before this post is over, I’m going to tell you exactly what I brought, what worked, what didn’t, and where to find the things worth finding. But first, you need to understand how the list got built.

So I researched.

Not to solve the mystery.

To prepare for whatever the mystery turned out to be.

There’s a difference.

I watched videos about packing for unknown climates. About what gear holds up and what doesn’t. About what the people who travel a lot wish they had figured out sooner. About what the people who travel smart carry and what they leave behind.

I found some creators who became genuinely useful guides through the whole process:

Away Together helped shape how I thought about packing philosophy.
Pack Hacker was where a lot of the gear research started getting serious.
Portable Professional (Travel Tips with Megan) kept me grounded in the practical side of what actually works when you’re moving through cities on your own.

None of them were selling anything.

They were just people who had figured things out and were generous enough to share the process.

And all the while, the clues kept coming.

Clue 4 told me the locals ate a lot of bread.

Clue 5 mentioned some of the oldest man-made temples in the world.

Clue 6 said I was going to the land of gorgeous horses.

Each clue landed like a breadcrumb.

I was building a picture without being able to name what was in it yet. The Mediterranean feeling from the proposal was getting more specific with every card.

History. Culture. Outdoor life.

A place where the pace was different, and the food had weight behind it.

By Clue 6, the people following along on social media were getting a little too good at this.

The guesses were piling up.

The enthusiasm was contagious.

The mystery was starting to feel less mysterious.

I had to do something about that before Clue 7 arrived.

That story belongs to the next post.

The research and the clues were running parallel.

Both feeding the same anticipation.

And while the clues were painting the picture, the research was getting me ready to actually walk into it.

But it wasn’t just gear.

I downloaded a Currency Converter so I’d never have to do math in my head at a register in a country I’d never been to.

Google Translate went on the phone for whatever language I was going to need.

I sorted out Travel Medical Insurance, because that’s just the responsible version of this story.

Then I decided to sort out an eSIM for data service.

Which went beautifully, right up until I discovered my phone had to be carrier-unlocked to use it. It was not.

I reached out about a refund. The response I received, and I want to be precise here, was that I shouldn’t have purchased the service if I couldn’t use it.

I ate the cost. I used my carrier’s international roaming instead.

And honestly, for a short trip, it wasn’t anywhere near as awful as everyone warned me it would be. Sometimes the backup plan is fine.

The bank calls were their own experience.

I had to contact my bank and every credit card company to let them know I’d be traveling internationally. The part that made each conversation interesting was when they asked where I was going.

Somewhere in Europe, probably. I think. I’m not entirely sure yet.

Some of them found that charming. Some of them did not. All of them flagged my account anyway, which is the part that actually mattered.

My beloved backpack was falling apart.

I don’t say that lightly.

A good backpack is a relationship.

You know where everything lives.

You know which pocket opens which way.

You know exactly how full it can get before it stops closing right.

Mine had been there for years, and it was done.

I searched. I crowdsourced. I asked around, watched videos, and came up with nothing that felt right. So in a last-minute act of mild desperation, I ordered a cheap backpack from Amazon that I figured would at least survive the trip.

It almost instantly won my heart.

Sometimes the thing you weren’t sure about becomes the thing you can’t imagine not having.

Lightweight, organized, and handled everything I put it through without complaint.

Not every underdog story ends that well. This one did.

The sling bag was a different decision with a specific purpose.

When you’re traveling alone, you’re the whole team.

There’s no one to watch your things while you step away.

There’s no one to hold the extra bag while you dig through the main one.

Everything is on you, which means the things you need most have to stay as close to you as possible.

The sling solved that.
Compact, right there, exactly what I needed when I needed it.

A packable tote compressed down to almost nothing and lived at the bottom of everything as a backup.

Because if you know me at all, you know I build redundancy into most things.

The suitcase I brought wasn’t new to travel.

I bought it for my cruise, after Spirit Airlines came dangerously close to destroying a suitcase I had borrowed from a friend.

Hard shell felt like the right lesson to take from that experience.

It looked great going in.

Organized interior. Solid shell. Fit the carry-on parameters exactly.

The handle had other plans. More on that in a moment.

I’ve carried small carabiners on my keychain for years.

Not as a travel thing. Just as a thing.

They unjam backpack zippers.

They can technically function as a belt in a pinch, which is a sentence I hope you never need but will absolutely remember now.

They organize. They secure. They connect things that need connecting.

They solve small problems quietly, which is basically their whole personality.

Travel didn’t change what carabiners are. It just gave them more opportunity.

And somewhere on this trip, they solved a problem I hadn’t anticipated yet.

That story has its own post.

The Heroclip handles something I have never once had a clean solution for.

You can’t put a bag on a restaurant floor.

You can’t pile it on the table.

The move where you drape it over the chair and watch it slide all dinner.

That’s not a solution.

The Heroclip attaches to almost anything and holds your bag exactly where you put it.

Years of sad chair drape, ended.

On the plane, I found a problem I couldn’t find any solution for.

The bag goes under the seat in front of you exactly where it’s supposed to go. But once that seat reclines and stays there for the entire flight, the already tight space turns into something closer to a shoebox. Getting to anything means an awkward crouched fumble nobody has time for at 30,000 feet.
So I MacGyvered it.
I hooked the Heroclip to a second carabiner, and that one attached to the carabiner already on my backpack handle.
When you need something, you just grab the carabiners right in front of you and pull. Problem solved.
Three carabiners I already had with me on the plane.

I’ve seen elaborate plane organization systems for sale. Mine cost nothing extra.

Luggage wheel covers handled the hotel hallways and airport floors without sounding like I was dragging a shopping cart through a marble museum at 6 in the morning.

The neck pillow situation took a wrong turn before it found the right answer.

I tried an inflatable one first.

Too bulky, too much fuss, not worth the carry.

Then I found the Trtl.
It wraps around your neck, supports your head from the side, and packs down to almost nothing. No inflating. No awkward horseshoe taking up half your bag.

On a long international flight, actual neck support is not optional.

The Trtl pillow figured that out in a way the inflatable never did.

A sleep mask came along too.

Between the flights and the new time zone on the other end, blocking out the light completely became part of the routine every night and whenever I needed to rest in transit.

A slim wallet kept the everyday stuff accessible.

A stash pouch clipped to my belt and tucked behind my waistband handled anything I needed to keep extra safe. Hidden, secure, and not going anywhere no matter how crowded the street got.

You don’t think about it once it’s on. That’s the point.

The RFID neck pouch came along on travel days and was easy enough to keep out of the way once I was settled at my destination.

Thankfully, I never needed it in any real moment of urgency.

I also never once stopped being glad it was there.

That’s the honest version of what peace of mind actually feels like.

Not a dramatic save.

Just a quiet background hum that lets you look up from your belongings and actually see the city.

The toiletry situation took a few trips to actually figure out.

When I first started traveling, two things became standard almost immediately.

Packing cubes, because everything having a designated place means you can find everything. I’ve been a believer for a few trips now, and I have no intention of going back.

And the clear toiletry bag, because pulling one visible bag at TSA is just cleaner than fishing through a full backpack for scattered bottles.

The goal this time was to make that clear bag as small as possible.

I’ve been going to the Holly Farmers Market in Holly, Michigan, for years.
It’s one of the best around, and Body Kemistry is always there.
She makes skincare products, balms, bars, all of it.

I’ve been getting her lip balm for longer than I can remember.

So when I started looking for solid alternatives to my liquid toiletries, I knew immediately who to ask.

She makes soap, face wash, shampoo, and conditioner in solid bar form.

We talked through the trip length, and she helped me figure out exactly how much of each I’d need.

I cut the bars into pieces.

Four small chunks that together were smaller than a single full-sized bar.

Enough to get through the whole trip with product to spare.

A leakproof travel soap bag kept everything contained and dry between uses.

My toiletry situation is a work in progress.

It was before this trip, and it still is.

But this trip got me that much closer to something that actually works.

The remaining liquids were my cologne in a travel atomizer, contact solution, eye drops, toothpaste sachets, and sunscreen.

The sachets and sunscreen technically count as liquids, so those were transferred into small pouches that took up less and less space as they were used.

Deodorant, facial sunscreen, and moisturizer rounded out the kit.

Aspirin, stomach meds, and chewable mouthwash tablets lived in their own small, clear pouches.

When I zipped up that clear bag, it was small enough that my entire toiletry setup fit inside it comfortably.

Every other trip I’ve ever taken, that bag was the problem.

This time, it was barely a thought.

Here is something nobody talks about enough. Ziploc bags.

Nothing in my luggage was loose. Not one thing.

Everything that didn’t live in a packing cube or a dedicated case lived in a labeled Ziploc bag.

Medications in one.
Backup items in another.
Small accessories sorted and sealed and exactly where I expected them to be.

Everything I needed on the plane lived in its own Ziploc packed right at the top of my carry-on.

No digging. No unpacking half the bag at 35,000 feet to find one thing.

Just open, grab, done.

I kept a stack of backup bags flat at the bottom of both my carry-on and my suitcase. They took up almost no space and I found a use for them more than once.

It’s not glamorous.

It’s not a product anyone is going to sponsor.

But a good packing system isn’t about having the most impressive gear. It’s about knowing exactly where everything is at every moment of the trip.

Ziploc bags are doing more work than they get credit for.

I had a decent amount of gear on this trip, which meant cable and power management needed their own system.

A cable organizer held everything together.
Power bank.
Cables.
A compact travel power strip, because whatever hotel I ended up in, I wasn’t going to be fighting over a single outlet or contorting myself to reach the one plug on the wrong side of the room.
An Epika universal power adapter handled whatever outlet configuration the destination had waiting for me.
A USB drive for backing up everything from the camera at the end of each day, because equipment fails and I wasn’t losing this footage.
A DJI expansion adapter for the Pocket 3 rounded out the camera kit.
My Soundcore headphones went in there too; wired cable included. They were noise-canceling, which on a long international flight is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Bluetooth is great until it isn’t, and somewhere over the Atlantic is not the place to discover it isn’t. Having the cable meant I never had to think about it. The headphones lived in their own case, but the optional cord stayed in the organizer where it would actually be findable.

I did a lot of research before landing on Soundcore.

The reviews were consistent, and the price made sense.

What I didn’t expect was how good they actually were.

Incredibly high quality for what I paid.

Those headphones deserve a separate mention, not just for the trip but for what happened after. They introduced me to Soundcore as a brand.

I’ve been wearing their open-ear clip headphones every single day for the past two years. That recommendation spiral started with one purchase for one trip and became part of my daily life.

That’s a win I didn’t see coming.

The Samsung tablet came along for the journey.

I went back and forth about this one.

The Switch was in the conversation.

But here’s the honest truth: I knew I wasn’t going to play Switch games over anything else available on a screen when I was tired and in transit.

The tablet made more sense.

Shrek and Shrek 2 were downloaded and ready.

Jurassic Park, the novel, was loaded in my Nook app for the quieter stretches.

It earned its spot.

Packing for a cruise means having a completely different outfit for every possible occasion. Formal nights. Pool days. Shore excursions. Dinners that require something other than a t-shirt.