Rick here. Long-time reader, first-time contributor.

 

You may be asking yourself, “Self, how do those boys do it? How do they travel the world, moving from Airbnb to Airbnb, without any of the comforts of home?”

 

I ask myself that every day.

 

The answer, of course, is tech. Lots of tech. Let me give you some idea of what I’m talking about.

 

Wi-Fi travel router

There is no more important thing in the whole wide world than the internet. But we are inherently suspicious of the internet provided by each hotel and Airbnb, so we decided to bring our very own personal access point, a travel router, with us. It fits into its own small carry case along with a bunch of electric plug adapters. After a relatively torturous process of reading poorly translated Taiwanese instructions, a sad Windows-like control panel interface, and the gobbledygook instructions from our recently purchased VPN service provider (NordVPN, we love you!) I was able to load the VPN into the router itself.

 

Hosting the VPN on the router instead of locally on each device gives us a modicum of password security. Bills and credit cards still need to be paid, and whether you use Quicken or log onto your bank’s website, you do not want your passwords hacked.

 

The router also removes the need to manually sign each device onto the new Wi-Fi every time we move. Once the travel router is connected to the new local network, all our devices seamlessly access the internet through it.

 

Apple TV

With the travel router in place and the VPN engaged, we can watch Hulu, Paramount+, Disney+—everything we watch at home because to the streaming services, it looks like we still are at home. So our nightly Seattle routine—watching The Late Show with Stephen Colbert followed by a couple TV shows—continues even from the far reaches of the earth. It’s very comforting, this routine. We like it muchly.

 

Sonos Roam travel speakers

We really, really like our tunes. And we really hate a quiet house. At home, we play music pretty much all day long. We continue the tradition on the road with our two small Sonos speakers. With the (absolutely essential) assistance of the travel router and its VPN service, we can also play our Spotify music, Apple music, every radio station in the world, and even white noise at night. They are cute little speakers, sound great, and are portable—running on battery power, we can move them around the place or take them to the beach. And two speakers mean stereo sound. So another important comfort of home is with us still.

 

Little portable fans

A recent addition to our tech pile (thanks, Michelle!), these little handheld wonders are USB-charged and last all day. We can set them down on any flat surface or carry them around. Ours can also be used as portable phone chargers or as flashlights. So that’s pretty cool. Also, they look like tiny bears, which is hilarious.

 

Universal electrical adapters

All our tech already runs on both 120 and 240 volts, so we don’t need electrical converters. And thank goodness because those suckers are heavy! But it seems like every country uses a different style electrical outlet. So we have several different universal adapters—the kind that can be changed to work in any outlet. A couple also have USB-2 and USB-C ports, so they’re handy hubs for all the devices that need to be kept charged.

 

Extension cords and long USB cables

Some hotels and Airbnbs have used all the convenient electrical outlets for their own lights and stuff, so we need to bring power from far-away plugs up close so we can use it. The extension cords give us access to those outlets and also allow one adapter to be split into three or four USA-style plugs.

Apple AirTags

We have Airtags in all our luggage, including carry-ons and backpacks.

 

Not so fun fact—United lost our largest suitcase once on our very first flight out of the U.S. in Germany. We were in Hungary, which was, well, inconvenient. Actually, it was a horrifying nightmare, eased only slightly by the fact that we could see that our suitcase was still at the Frankfurt airport because it had an AirTag inside. We watched as it moved back and forth between terminals, moved around the airport, and finally ended up in the Lost and Found Office, which we identified via the airport's internet map. Neither United, Lufthansa nor the local baggage claim people in Hungary seemed able to help us retrieve our bag. They all pointed fingers at each other. Heck, at one point, we even considered flying back to Germany to retrieve the suitcase ourselves.

 

So imagine our joy, days into the escapade, when the tracking app showed that the bag was in Hungary! We watched it live on the iPhone’s “Find My” app as it was driven to us by car, and we were there to collect it curbside when the driver pulled up.

 

Airtags, buy some!

 

Lock and steel cable

This comes in pretty low on the tech scale. Still, it is related because it protects our tech—I’ve been carrying around a lock and a 20-foot cable just in case we end up somewhere one of us has to guard the luggage while the other does recon. It’s easy for a thief to grab one roller bag but much harder to walk away with three tied together—and nearly impossible if they are all tied to a post. We haven’t had to do this yet, but we will.

 

Cloud storage/cloud computer data backup

Portable drives are heavy, and they can be stolen. The loss of either of our computers would be devastating, so we have subscription services backing everything up to the cloud. We can only hope that should the worst happen, we’ll be able to buy new computers and restore them easily.

 

Kindle e-reader

Books, magazines, and (in Geoff’s case) comic books are also heavy. This single device rules them all.

 

Portable luggage scale

Turns out other countries are very persnickety about how much your luggage weighs. Ugh. To avoid trauma at the airport, we have a device that lets us weigh stuff before we go to the airport in case we need to rebalance anything.

 

So there you go, curious readers. This is how we bring some of our most essential "home" experiences while traveling.

 

We wouldn’t (couldn’t) travel without the tech.

 

 

 

 

posted February 2024