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Travel gear thread

Honestly though, I generally fly Southwest so I can check my bags which I greatly prefer.
I carry on my bags to get the small satisfaction of walking directly off the airplane out of the terminal.... I've also had enough lost and misrouted bags over the year to always be worrying about whether checked bags will arrive. I now will be throwing AirTags in so that if the bag goes awry, I'll at least know where it is!
 

OkieStubble

Dirty Donuts are so Good.
I haven't flown in quite a few years, but the few times I had to fly, most were within the U.S. and not longer than a couple of days, so I took just a small cartridge razor and a can of foam and a small travel tube of Afta in a zip lok bag and packed enough clothes for the 2 days in a carry on duffle bag. I have only flown internationally once in my life and took the full sized dopp kit for the 10 days I was there. If I travel now, it's probably on the road, so no problem bringing the loaded dopp kit for all the comforts of home.

I used to own a very nice, expensive, oiled leather dopp kit, but it had just the one giant zippered compartment and I like to compartmentalize my dopp kit to store all the multi-purposed stuff I use. I haven't owned a better Dopp bag than the one I have now, which only cost me like $8 or $9 dollars at Walmart years ago. It is some type of synthetic vinyl material but is sturdy and impervious to dirt, water, heat, cold or humidity. It has two large zippered main compartments with which to store stuff and smaller compartments inside the two larger compartments in order to organize more efficiently.

I am more of a purposed driven person, so I will choose something cheaper and a bit less sophisticated, if it works and is useful over something leather, gorgeous and expensive, but is only designed to throw everything together in one giant zippered hole.

Here is my bag loaded down for travel.
 

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OkieStubble

Dirty Donuts are so Good.
I have no clue why all those pics came out sideways. It's late and i'm tired, so i don't feel like fixin' it. :)

Anyway, if you tilt your head to the left or right, you can see the two, larger main compartments. One holds 4 bottles from the Sharper image, I keep lotion in one, antiseptic in another, alcohol in another for cleaning the razor and cartridge and a 2 in 1 hair shampoo/conditioner in another. A bar soap container and the blue deodorant stick is actually a melted puck of van der hagen I use as a shave stick.

You can see in the pics In the second large compartment, I keep a collasible red cup to rinse my razor if shaving at a hotel sink or to use for water to swallow pills or whatever. There is also a shower scrubby, hanging mirror if I shave in a hotel shower and you can see the small black, synthetic travel brush from Maggards. I keep the brush in an empty La Toja shave stick container, fits perfectly and has good air circulation thru the holes in it.

There is a smaller zippered pouch in the first larger compartment, where I keep a small travel Trac II handle in a leather case along with several Trac II carts. In the second larger compartment, there are two other smaller pouches in which i keep a travel folding tooth brush, toothpaste, floss and mouthwash. In the second smaller pouch, I keep a small plastic hairbrush and a small spray anodizer with aftershave in it.

and then finally, an outer zippered pocket on the side, for bandaids, ibuprofen, antibiotic ointment, chapstick, a comb, tooth picks and a few decongestion tablets. Whew! I'm exhausted... :)
 
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I’m always trying to keep my travel gear as small as possible, particularly liquids that need to fit in the 1 qt bag.
I had been using a Maggard 18mm travel synth but in August tried making a turned box brush handle to hold an inch of soap stick. In particular I designed the whole thing to fit in a pill bottle. The knot is a 20mm G5 synth from Maggards.

Needs a bit of work, the box held up for 1 trip, but by the 2nd trip the friction was insufficient to hold the lid on properly. Not quite sure why that is, likely due to the thinness of the joint. Also the soap isn’t holding in quite as well as I’d like. All the more reason to go back and have another try, perhaps using acrylic.

When checking bags I take a straight, preferably this Friodur 472 since it is one of my few stainless steel straights.
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Not shown - a TM 2” travel strop. For trips where I am using a carry-on, I swap the straight and strop for a disposable cartridge razor.
 

JCinPA

The Lather Maestro
Like @OkieStubble I like simple bags, mine is not expensive either. I actually got a 1950's vintage leather Dopp kit on eBay quite a while ago, and PIF'd it here to someone. Like Okie, I did not care for the bulk of it, although it was a gorgeous piece of kit. Now I have one from Alpha One Niner.

Ooops, scratch the not expensive. I think it was about $15 when I got mine many years ago, but it's gone up since. I have the black with red interior.


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I don't travel much any more, but until 2019 I used to max out the airline and hotel categories. I just used the BIC Metal as the disposable I liked the most, although I was more prone to weepers with it than shaving at home. But I rarely did the week-long thing where it made sense to mail blades ahead, and the Metals were (IMO) the next best choice. I was always 1-2 nights here, move on, 1-2 nights there, then home again.

I had a beautiful little hand-turned brush I cannot find now :mad: and I use the small tube of Bigelow from Bed Bath and Beyond (Proraso green cream). One thing that is invaluable was a set of various sized nalgene bottles I got from Amazon. They are very leakproof, and I'd just squeeze them a pinch before capping them, and they took the pressure changes on a flight very well. I have shampoo in the big one, and Thayer's WH and Clubman in the smaller two. It worked for the better part of 10 years of lots of travel.

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When I'm not flying, I use this leather case for my razor and bring the good gear along.

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JCinPA

The Lather Maestro
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Oh, I forgot, my other favorite travel lather, probably more than the Bigelow small tube, as a La Tojo stick! how could I forget that? The plastic case kept separating in my shaving kit and so I tossed it and just dried it off after use and tossed in there wrapped in a tissue.
 
My travel bag: Maxpedition Tactical Toiletry. It’s sturdy, can be hung anywhere with a built-in hook or strap.

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Soap: Tabac stick with its plastic dispenser.

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Brush: any synthetic brush, carried in a leather travel roll.
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Razor: any DE or SE, carried in a Hide & Drink leather case. If carry on, BIC Metal.

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Aftercare: lotions decanted into small travel jars.
 

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This is quite a timeley thread as I’m travelling at the moment. Only a 2/3 day trip to London and travelling by rail so decided to scale down my shaving kit. The razor is a merkur travel safety bar, brush is a Simpson Wee Scot in its own travel tube. Soap is Palmolive and blades are Rapira stainless. Not pictured is a sample of Morgan’s pomade and a small sample of Harris cologne.

All this fits rather nicely in my Parker mini leather wash bag. Anything else I need is generally supplied by the hotel.


Thanks,

R
 

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Here's the real travel question I have for the group: how best to handle razors and carry-ons. I do a fair number of overnight trips where I can manage with just a carry-on. Do folks go with cartridge razors? If so, which? I've carried a Mach3 but thinking that a single blade (the Bic metal?) might be closer to my daily DE shave. OR, since King C. Gillette blades seem to now be carried in major drugstore chains, I'm now thinking that I can bring my razor and swing by a drugstore to pick those up. And I can even check, at, say, CVS, is they have them in stock at the destination city. Curious if anyone has tried that?
I used to use a Gillette Mach 3 or sensor, I prefer as few blades as possible and only used the m3 when I was out of fresh sensor cartridges.

More recently I’ve been using the new Gillette skin guard and despite the astronomically high price of replacement carts (I only buy them when on offer) it actually gives quite a good shave. Pair it with a Palmolive shave stick and a synthetic brush and I’m good to carry on with most airlines
 
Travel update: flew on Sunday. For the trip, I had my travel kit together and carried a H&S N075 as my razor (pic below). I checked before I flew that a CVS near my hotel would have King C Gillette blades. So, for $6 a could pick up 10 blades and I figured that even if I had them confiscated on the way home by TSA, what's $6 out the door compared to the cost of the hotel room alone? Although I might not want to pay that much for shaving every day, for two days it's not really that much to be able to use a DE razor I like. But, I also carried a Bic metal in case I couldn't get the DE blades or if the CVS website was wrong. Well, I flew in, got the King Gillette blades, used everything for two days, and it went well. On the way back home at TSA, I had the blades in a separate bag in my carry-on and TSA didn't stop me. So, all in all, I'm willing to keep trying this approach of bringing a DE razor and checking in advance as to being able to get blades for it.
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I think the Italian travel toiletry bag is made by Vetelli (vetelli.com). Thanks for the picture and inspiration. I am going to order one (online), and save myself a trip to Italy.
 
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