Caching and stashing (think: traveling without packing)

I saw a tweet a few days ago from Tim Ferris (of The 4-Hour Workweek fame), praising Sean Bonner’s recent post on Practical Urban Caching.  The idea is that when you travel regularly to certain destinations, you shouldn’t have to pack.  If you are heading repeatedly to a certain location, the key is to find a way to store what you need there on the ground, instead of carrying it with you from wherever you are and then back home again.
For example, my wife and I make several trips a year to visit her parents and relatives near Pittsburgh.  This last Thanksgiving I made the trip with my rucksack and the small carry-all I now use.  Even with this light load, however, I was itching.  I wanted to go lighter.  Bonner’s caching concept fits the bill perfectly, and the next time Kira and I head north I will have packed a bag specifically to be left behind at her folk’s house when we return to Memphis.
A few months back, REI had a clearance sale and I stocked up on duplicates of some of the pants and shirts that I like, so I already have some extras I could use as a basic wardrobe to build on.  Most of the trips we make are 2 – 4 days, so a couple extra shirts and one extra pair of pants on-site should do the trick.  I’ll need to stock a couple extra pairs of underwear and undershirts, and get the toiletries and such figured out.  What this means, ultimately, is that I will be able to get on the plane without a bag, and not feel the pinch one bit.  Heaven.
Bonner does raise an important issue, however: What about cities and locales where one doesn’t have the benefit of parents or friends to stash the cache between trips?  An interesting solution came in the comments to the post.  A reader named Marc Nathan wrote about a company he had worked with as a startup called SpareFoot.com.  The company is designed to help broker arrangements between folks who have storage space (of all types and sizes – from large warehouses to the corner of an attic) and folks who need storage space.  Nathan suggested that, though the service had not been specifically designed for urban caching applications, that this was a perfect use of SpareFoot.  (Addendum: it looks like another reader has taken this idea and parleyed it into a potential business venture.)
The downside to such an approach, of course, is that it could get expensive rather quickly.
I’ve been thinking this through for the past couple days, and the more I think about it, the more it calls for a radical approach to one’s travel ethics.  Let’s call it “relational travel” – the idea being that, if I am going to travel to a location enough times to want to cache something there, then I better darn well be meeting people and building relationships on the ground such that someone would let me stash a bag at their place for retrieval on my next visit.
This means traveling less like a tourist and more like a human being.  It’s a style of travel I have long seen work well for some of my good friends (one in particular has spent major portions of the past few years exploring Korea and Thailand, moving slowly and living cheaply, and building networks of friends and acquaintances along the way.  I have been with him when he has struck up conversations with perfect strangers on the street or in a restaurant.  Not in a creepy way, either.  Just human and friendly.  I am convinced that, through practice, he has learned the art of being able to talk to anybody).
Caching is a practical reason, therefore, for the type of “experiential travel” practices preached by folks like Greg Sullivan and Joe Diaz over at AFAR magazine.  Think about it this way: the stronger a connection you make with people over time, the lighter your load when you travel.
Now that’s a goal worth working toward.

The art and science of staying dry

The one place you don’t want to be making decisions about how to keep the rain off you is when the first drops are falling from the sky.  I can’t tell you, though, how many times I was in exactly this position before I finally started taking steps to keep dry.  Beating the rain is all in the planning, and it starts with what you choose to wear even when there’s not a cloud in the sky.  Staying dry means thinking about your wardrobe from the ground up.
I used to be an “all cotton” kind of guy.  Cotton t-shirts, overshirts, socks, blue jeans and underwear.  This was comfortable when I spent a lot of my time indoors, but it meant, without fail, that I was absolutely miserable in the rain.  Cotton is a great fabric, but it absorbs water and holds on to it, locking it into the weave.  Whether this moisture is rain or sweat, cotton will not let it go and will not dry out for hours.  If this weren’t bad enough, once cotton soaks through, it also fails to hold warmth.  What this means is that wet cotton clothes will keep you both wet and cold, neither of which is ideal.  On top of this is the clincher, because wet cotton also binds and chafes.  This means that long-term walking in cotton underwear is a recipe for disaster, in sunshine and especially in the rain.  Rethinking my rain clothing involved rethinking the fabrics I wear on a regular basis.
Here are some qualities you should look for in good rain clothing.  First off, let’s get some some terminology in place.
Moisture wicking: These fabrics pull wetness away from the skin and transport it through to the outer layer.  These types of fabrics are excellent to use in base layers (those closest to the body).  However, read the labels carefully.  Some articles of clothing are labeled as moisture wicking but contain cotton and other slow-drying fibers.  Therefore, you need to match moisture wicking with clothes that are
Quick drying: As the label says, these fabrics shed moisture very quickly.  A variety of blends have this quality, including some containing cotton.  Some achieve the quick-drying quality through chemical treatments, others through a specific weave, or a combination of the two.
The secret to good clothing is to match and layer fabrics with an eye to transporting moisture away from the body comfortably and getting it to the surface of the clothing where it will evaporate quickly.  On dry days this allows you to stay active and comfortable with maximum movement and minimum discomfort or chafing.
Start with a good core.  For example, I switched out my cotton boxers and undershirts for a set of underwear made of synthetic materials that wicks moisture much more effectively.  For a while I was using Champion C9 boxer-briefs in combination with C9 all-polyester t-shirts.  The briefs were quick drying, but were not really well-designed for comfort.  The t-shirts, however, worked great and are still part of my wardrobe.
An enthusiastic salesperson at REI told me about ExOfficio Boxer Briefs.  I bought a pair, thinking that I would use them mainly during travel.  However, after trying them on a few trips, I liked them so much I ended up replacing my regular day-to-day cotton underwear with them.  The final touch was to start wearing thin, moisture wicking socks underneath my regular socks.  So this combination is my basic layer for day-to-day wear.  On cold days, I’ll add some thermal leggings as well.
Once the base layer is established, the key is to build on it according to the conditions.  I have a variety of shirts and pants that each do a good job of drying quickly and keeping me warm.  The key is that, day to day, as I am active and move and sweat, the combination keeps me dry and comfortable.  The clothing is so good, in fact, that a few weeks I was caught in a full-on torrential downpour, and managed to get through the day without too much discomfort.  I was damp, but I wasn’t soaked.
The final key to staying dry is planning an outer layer that can be put on over your daytime clothing.  For me, I have been very pleased with a combination coat and pant set from Helly Hansen.  While this rain gear wouldn’t do for all-day wear (if you’re looking for that sort of thing, you’ll want to try some Gore-Tex products), they are the best I have found for keeping the rain absolutely repelled.
Even if your strategy differs from mine, it all comes down to good planning.  The closer you come to your rain wear being a part of your every day wear, the more effective it will be.