While most of the posts on this blog have been related to what I’ve dubbed “Project Garanchou” and its development over the last 15 years or so, the fact that I’ve been watching a lot of travel videos on YouTube where the presenters are using backpacks vs. suitcases or checked baggage lately and have followed both /r/onebag and /r/heronebag for a number of years has me thinking about how to truly optimize solo travel.
I have discussed solo business trips over the years, and some of those have had required checked luggage due to the length of the trip as well as the need for tools from time to time. As my role has changed where the only “travel” I do for work being localish drives, I’m able to carry my regular work backpack which includes my toolbag on these trips. As such, what I’m wanting to focus on in this post is personal trips that will be either by air, train, bus, or ship. I have heard rumor of some potential for conference trips next year, so we’ll see where that goes.
Anyway, the smallest bag I’ve ever taken on a trip is my smaller carry-on-sized suitcase. I’ve always carried a separate bag for technology, and sometimes if it was an anime con a separate “convention” bag, but I’ve tried to unite the laptop bag and this bag on some trips. Ever since I started toting a small USB-C monitor, this has been necessary for a lot of these trips. It’s been quite a nice addition even for media consumption in hotel rooms in the evening of trips so I’m a bit loath to give it up just yet. However, using a standalone hotspot like the M5 lets me pack a Chromecast or Roku stick, both of which are quite small, so I won’t really need to use the monitor if it’s just a personal trip and I wanna watch a movie in the evening if it’s at a hotel. That’s assuming the M5 has sufficient signal, which has been an issue in the past with other devices. As the M5 covers all bands in play by T-Mobile, it should be less of an issue.
This then brings up the question of “how do I access my Plex library when not at home” which goes back to the way it’s been done for a while now: VPN connections, at least on whichever laptop I end up using. While I am perfectly happy with my existing Acer laptop, it is a few years old, and its video card is a couple generations old with very limited VRAM. While I’m not presently playing FF14, I do multibox FF11, so a little bit of extra VRAM would be handy. It was also marketed as a “creator” laptop vs. a “gaming” laptop, so the cooling seems to be less suited to MMOs than CAD or similar.
What sort of laptop then? I had looked into a Framework 16 at one point, then a Framework 13 as those now have the newer AMD APUs, and while I absolutely believe in Framework’s mission and wish them great success, I’ll probably get a MacBook Air for my next laptop. I currently use a M1 Mac Mini for my “secondary” machine, and it works fantastic. I just wish I’d got it with 16GB of RAM instead, but it works well enough for its usage. So, why a MacBook Air specifically?
First off, I have an iPhone, so having the Messages app to send text messages is very much killer app territory and was incredibly useful when I had my MacBook Pro and previous MacBook Air some years ago.
Secondly, I have AirPods: I could seamlessly move these to the Mac to listen to music or watch a movie if I weren’t using some sort of device plugged into a TV.
Thirdly, the battery life is truly ridiculous. Obviously on most trips I’ll be able to connect to AC power, and if it were a road trip, I have a USB-C cable in my glove box for charging USB-C laptops from a cig plug adapter, but if it’s a situation where plugging in is inconvenient or unavailable, as happens on some aircraft and at certain airports, or maybe on some sort of other transit or simply in a restaurant, having something I could feasibly stay off shore power for multiple hours would be very helpful.
Fourthly, I used VirtualBox or VMware Fusion in the past on the Intel MacBooks with great success, and the Apple Silicon transition’s made Parallels the preferred solution, so. I installed the trial on my Mac Mini recently to test it out, and FF11 worked just fine on it. This will be nice to have also for radio programming software just in case I decide to pack a ham radio handheld with me. FF14 has a native Mac client, and of course WoW does too. For all other games Parsec to my desktop is an option.
And lastly, regarding the aforementioned VPN connections: both vanilla WireGuard and Tailscale, depending on which I end up going with for the VPN, have “On Demand VPN” capability similar to my iPhone’s on macOS. Obviously I wouldn’t need this at home, if Project Garanchou were in play, or if I were wherever I end up colocated as I’m going to have a very localized WiFi network there, but quite literally everywhere else, including on the M5’s network with it running standalone, I’ll need it. I would like to continue using Tailscale as the ability to toggle exit nodes off and on is quite simple in case of public WiFi, but we’ll circle back to this at some point in the future.
Now to the question of “will I be able to truly start onebagging trips”: the answer is a resounding maybe. One advantage to being a woman is despite my larger clothing sizes, ladies’ clothing tends to be able to pack down a lot smaller. This will depend on the length of the trip, the size of the backpack I’ll be using, and the sheer number of things that would go in the backpack as miscellaneous accessories for the trip. The actual deepdive and planning is outside the scope of this post, and for that matter will probably go on the main blog whenever I get around to looking into this, possibly later in the year.
One small note for me to consider: I currently carry a small bag that’s about the size of a VHS tape as my purse, and this would easily fit in a backpack and give a place to keep my phone as well as transit cards or rental car keys as needed. As one onebagger’s packing lists I’ve followed for a bit included a “packable day pack”, I consider this an similar item. Again, actual planning is outside the scope of this post, and maybe even this particular blog.
I’m planning to take a few trips in the next few years to varying locations, so I need to start thinking about this more seriously relatively soon.
Until next time!