Review: Pentel 8-Color Pencil (for the light traveling artist)

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A lot of artists like to take their art supplies with them when they travel. For some, the joy they get from creating art on the road more than makes up for the inconvenience of lugging all of their supplies. For others, they come up with creative ways to lighten their load, carrying fewer things and packing everything into a very portable artist kit.

And then there are people like me. As much as I like to draw, my work more closely resembles doodles, and it’s rarely worth my trouble to pack any meaningful art supplies. Usually, the most I take with me might be a pocket sketchbook, a Sharpie pen, a mechanical pencil, and an eraser. Sometimes I take more, sometimes less.

However, I recently discovered a great little item that I’ve since incorporated as a regular item in my mini art kit: the Pentel 8-Color Pencil.

The Pentel 8-Color Pencil

If you’ve ever come across a “stacking crayon,” you know how convenient those things are. There are a couple of different styles, but they all provide multiple colors of crayon tips that snap into a single pen holder, giving you a complete palette in a tiny bit of space.

Various types of stacking crayons for kids. Photo courtesy of P-Wholesale.com.

The biggest issue with these is that they are designed primarily for kids to play around with. So the crayon quality is rather poor. Add to that, the fact that these mechanical crayon pencils only offer TIPS of each color; once you’ve drawn a picture or two, you’ve run out of color.

The Pentel 8-Color Pencil is completely different from these kid’s toys. It’s a mechanical pencil that has eight slots, with each housing a different color lead the length of a regular mechanical pencil lead. On top of that, the slots are refillable; you can buy lead refills for this pencil, just like you can for regular mechanical pencils.

If you’ve ever used a multi-point retractable pen (like the iconic Big 4-color ballpoint pen, or the more recent offerings from companies like Pilot and Uniball), the Pentel 8-Color Pencil works exactly the same way.

The 8-Color Pencil isn’t too heavy, although there is enough heft to it that you feel like you are drawing with a real instrument. There is no pen cap, since this is a retractable. To release lead out from the tip, just press down on the top button. The lead doesn’t feed down in measured segments like some mechanical pencils; holding down the top button just releases the lead, so you will want to be ready to catch it to prevent the whole thing from sliding out.

The colored leads feel pretty good. They feel a little softer than regular colored pencil lead, but they don’t feel at all mushy like crayon lead feels. The lead is each 2.0mm thick, which draws pretty thick lines. In fact, this actually makes a pretty good highlighter marker, esp with some of the lighter colors like yellow and pink. It might actually be better than pen highlighter markers on glossy surfaces, since the pencil wouldn’t cause any ink bleed.

If you’ve always wanted to sit down and sketch a scene during your travels but never wanted to bother with taking a box of colored pencils, this is the item to get.

The only down side? It’s a little pricey. Pentel sells it online for $24.48, although you can look around online (including eBay) and save a few bucks.

8-Color Pencil Model PH158
2.00mm pencil lead in red, blue, brown, orange, yellow, light green, pink, and light blue. Refillable with Pentel CH2 lead.

Available directly from Pentel for $24.84 or from Amazon for under $20.

Manufactured by Pentel

Back-to-School Sales

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It’s that time again! As we start heading to August, the large box stores have started stocking their shelves with extraordinarily cheap school supplies. How does this affect your light packing, you ask?

Among the piles and stacks of notepads and pencils, you will find some amazing bargains. I was in WalMart over the weekend, and they had a really cute cotton pencil case for $2.50. It was the perfect size for a small cosmetic case, so I picked one up right away. Yes, they are rather cheaply made. But normally it might be something they charge $10 for. And because it’s cheaply made, it means the fabric was pretty thin, making the case very light. When it was empty, it would fold completely flat.

Other great deals? If you travel with kids, now is the time to stock up with fun activity books to pack for a trip. You can also find a ton of markers, crayons, colored pencils. Have you been thinking about drawing some sketches during your trip? Buy some cheap art supplies without making a dent in your wallet.

My only warning: Go early. Like this week. Once it starts getting really close to school, those shelves and bins turn into huge jumbled heaps and you will be wasting your time trying to find things that haven’t been opened or broken.

Traveling with your cosmetics

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Cosmetics consumer advocate Paula Begoun (who has authored a number of books on practical cosmetic tips and sells her own line of skin care and cosmetics), recently discussed the topic of how to pack your cosmetics for travel in her syndicated radio show. You can listen to an archive of her show here.

Paula explained that she flies between 150,000 to 200,000 miles per year for her job (since she oversees overseas manufacturing of her products), and that she has a standard regimen she follows when flying. Some of her more handy tips include:

Laying out everything you plan to pack, on your bed – this lets you see if you’re taking anything unnecessary, and also lets you see if you’re missing anything important.

Wearing sunscreen on the plane – this is something most people don’t think about. But when you are flying at 30,000 feet during the day, you are getting a lot of UV rays through the windows.

Wear shoes that expand – Paula talked about all the women she saw in the airport wearing high heels who are in agony because their feet swell when they fly. Paula recommends comfortable stylish shoes from manufacturers like Merrell and Clark, and orders her shoes from Zappos.com (so do I!). She warns against wearing flip-flips because they provide no support.

Wear loose, comfortable clothing – Paula is particularly keen on wearing jersey knits, and mentioned MyShape.com as a great Web site for purchasing comfortable clothes for full figures, and Missook for women with a bigger budget. While I agree that jersey knits are comfortable, I have to disagree with Paula here, because jersey knits are a pain to hand wash. Unless you plan to stay in a hotel with laundry machines, stick with travel-friendly fabrics like “scrunch cloth” from Orvis.

Wear easy-to-remove make-up on the flight – Paula recommends that you go ahead and remove your make-up once you settle down on your flight, using a baby wet wipe, which will take everything off except the stubborn mascara. Once your make-up is off, she recommends keeping your face moist with face cream to combat the dry air in the cabin.

Paula carries the following in her quart-sized resealable bag, which she keeps in her carry-on:

  • Nasal decongestant spray (such as Afrin) – this helps you breathe easier and prevents pressure problems when your plane is about to land. If you are tight on room in your quart-sized bag, my suggestion is a nasal decongestant inhaler stick (like Vicks Vapor Inhaler). The stick is the same size as a stick of lip balm, and is a solid. Be careful: Both of these products clear your sinuses by shrinking the membrane, and you don’t want to use it all the time.
  • Your favorite fragrance – this makes you feel a little more feminine. Be careful not to spritz on too much; the last thing people like to do is smell strong perfume in an enclosed cabin. Just a dab on your neck will do.
  • Your entire full skin care routine, in travel-sized containers – Paula recommends toner, cleanser, moisturizer, etc. for her regimen.
  • Travel-sized stick of deodorant
  • Toothbrush and toothpaste
  • Moisturizer for your hands, like shea butter or cocoa butter – the Body Shop has little travel-sized tins of their Body Butter that is perfect for this. She says your hands will only feel greasy for a short while, but that the extra thick moisturizer will keep your hands from drying out during the flight.
  • Lubricating eye drops – since your eyes dry out as much as your skin does.
  • Silicone serum for your hair – keeps hair from frizzing out. She recommends the Garnier Fructis Brilliantine Shine Glossy Spray, which conveniently comes in 3-ounce spray bottles.

Paula likes to remove all her make-up on the flight, and then go through her entire skin care regimen and put her make-up on before the plane lands. If you brush your teeth and get all your make-up back on, you will feel like a civilized person when you land, and you’ll be able to hit the ground running.

For the most part, I think she’s got the right idea. Since I recommend taking everything with you in your carry-on, though, it means you need to be a little more organized about what you pack in your quart-sized toiletry bag. For example, the silicone serum spray might be handy since it comes in a 3-ounce bottle, the reason Garnier sells the product in a 3-ounce bottle is because most people will only need two sprays to tame their hair. Nobody in the world will run out of this product during their vacation trip… so there’s incentive for the Travelite packer to transfer the silicone serum into say a 1-ounce spritzer bottle.

Low-tech idea: Mike Rohde’s Alaska Sketchnotes

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Mike Rohde is a graphic artist who publishes a lot of his work (and thoughts) online on his blog, Rohdesign.com. I’ve always admired his sense of style, and when his method of doodling conference notes evolved into his own style of “sketchnotes,” he completely hit it out of the ballpark. Instead of blindly writing down lecture notes or just adding some comments on conference handouts, Mike decided he would listen for key points, and convey them in his Moleskine sketchbook using a mixture of simple sketches, and clever use of handwritten typography.

Mike Rohdes Alaskan Cruise 09 Sketchnotes.

Mike Rohde's Alaskan Cruise '09 Sketchnotes.

When he went on an Alaskan cruise last year, he decided to use his sketchnotes style to document some of what he learned and experienced on his trip. The result is his Alaskan Cruise ’09 Sketchnotes, which you can view on Flickr.

OK, so most of us aren’t as talented as Mike is. But his beautiful (and monochrome) sketchnotes reminds us that we don’t have to take a big camera bag and a ton of gadgets in order to remember our trips. Mike’s Alaskan sketchnotes are a great example of how anyone can take a little notebook with them to capture their memories of a trip.

If you like sharing your trip reports with friends, imagine how novel and fun your report will be if they include scans of your sketchnotes. And if you’re the type to frame something like this after you return, you might even consider using the Japanese-style Moleskine notebook with fold-out pages. Just sketch on one side of the paper, and then cut the panels later and frame them to your liking.

iPad: A light traveler’s dream, or just another gadget?

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I hadn’t reviewed the iPad for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t personally have one. And secondly, there’s a ton of reviews online for the iPad. Recently, however, a friend of mine spent three weeks visiting Vietnam and Singapore with his wife. I knew he was taking his new iPad 3G with him, so when he came back, I asked him what his experience was like. I specifically wanted to know, based on his experience, whether an iPad is a friend to the traveliter, or just an extra gadget you don’t really need.

Since this trip was half-pleasure and half-work, my friend Dmitri was a little apprehensive about how it would withstand his business needs. Not all applications that he normally uses on his computer have an exact complement on the iPad (he gives the word processor as an example of an app that isn’t perfect), but because only half his trip was work-related, he was willing to set his requirements lower—the iPad’s form factor won out for him, especially after he decided to spend extra for an overseas connectivity plan through AT&T (he chose the 100MB plan for $119.99, although there are others).

One big difference for Dmitri was that while he traveled everywhere with his laptop, he always had to find a safe place to stash it in his hotel room. With the iPad, he discovered that he could put it in his daypack and take it with him everywhere. In the past, when he took his laptop with him during the day, he would carry a laptop case, which after packing power adapters and various cables, didn’t allow enough room to use as a regular daypack.

On one of the days, his iPad came in handy when his wife wanted a massage. “We had no idea where to find a good massage. All the signs are in Vietnamese, and we had no idea where to start,” he said. They finally decided to use the iPad. “I typed in ‘massage’ in Google Maps, and up popped seven or eight different massage places nearby. We would’ve never found them on our own.” His wife got a really good massage “for a fraction of what we’d pay at home,” he said.

Dmitri quickly checks his iPad to find out the latest information about World Cup soccer.

Dmitri quickly checks his iPad to find out the latest information about World Cup soccer.

A soccer fan, Dmitri also found it very easy to keep tabs on how the different teams were doing in the World Cup throughout the day. On one such break while he was traveling with his tour group, he decided to call home to California to see how his kids (who were staying with relatives) were doing. Instead of renting an international cell phone, Dmitri just used Skype on his iPad and made the call for free. He asked his tourmates if anyone else wanted to call home… and between the novelty of using an iPad to talk on the phone, and being assured that the calls were free, everyone in his tour took turns talking to their families back home. “There was one Scottish guy on the tour who didn’t even know what an iPad was,” he said. “We finally talked him into giving it a try, so he called his mum back home. And his mother couldn’t believe her son was phoning all the way from Vietnam—it was great!”

For their Singapore portion of the trip, the iPad became a convenient business tool. Dmitri had to give a presentation, and instead of lugging his laptop with a PowerPoint presentation, he purchased Apple’s Keynote app for the iPad for $10. Keynote, which converts PowerPoint presentations, also allows uses to create PowerPoint-type presentations right on the iPad. The only drawback with Keynote, he said, was that the current version blanks out the iPad screen when you project your presentation onto a larger screen. This means that the person giving the presentation has to periodically look up to see what’s being projected.

For Dmitri, the iPad wasn’t as good for taking notes. For that, he said, he just used paper. He could see a laptop as necessary for some business travel; some companies use proprietary software that only works on some operating systems, while some people need very robust business software (like spreadsheets or databases) and actually crunch their numbers during their business trips. But for most everything else—Web, e-mail, generic business tasks—he found the iPad to be superior for his work needs. And the simple fact that he didn’t need to carry a separate laptop bag made travel that much easier.

Dmitri found that his iPad was excellent for self-entertainment. Although he owns an Amazon Kindle book reader, he downloaded the Kindle app for his iPad, and left his Kindle device at home for this trip. “I’m currently reading The Passage (a New York Times bestseller about vampires, by Justin Cronin),” he said. “It’s roughly 800-pages long, but it’s no problem carrying it in the iPad using the Kindle app.” For this trip, he also downloaded episodes of the TV show Dollhouse, as well as some movies, music, and games. In the past, Dmitri had to juggle carrying all sorts of things on trips while still trying to pare down his belongings to minimize his luggage. For this trip, he fitted everything into his iPad.

Battery life was not a problem for him, even though he faced 15-hour flights and 20-hour transits for this trip. “I watched a couple of movies, some TV shows on the flights,” Dmitri said. When he was ready for a nap, he would turn on some music and nod off while wearing his noise-cancelling headphones, and his iPad still didn’t run out of battery. “We found that it took longer to charge the iPad than the iPhone, so we always charged the iPad overnight,” he said.

Although Dmitri would recommend the iPad, he agrees it’s not necessary for everyone. He said, “If you’re a guy and you don’t carry a bag at all, a smartphone like an iPhone is OK, since you can still do a lot of the same things.” However, he noted, “I would recommend the iPad for anyone who carries a daypack during the day. The iPad is so light; lighter weight with less bulk. I was able to take everything in my daypack, including water, sun hat, snacks, travel pillow… in addition to my iPad.”

After looking at over 70 cases online, he finally chose the official Apple iPad case. “I found that the simple one was the best,” he said, noting that the sleek case was small enough to easily slip into his daypack.

Dmitri and his daughter play a game of Plants vs. Zombies together on the iPad.

Dmitri and his daughter play a game of Plants vs. Zombies together on the iPad.

After using his iPad at home (playing Plants Vs. Zombies with his young daughter) and taking it on his overseas vacation, Dmitri calls the iPad “an infinite Swiss Army Knife.” Easier, better, and more convenient than a laptop or even a netbook, the best thing about the iPad, he says, is that it is most useful when you don’t expect it. “It’s when you don’t know something, when you’re disoriented, that it comes in handy,” he said.

Dmitri Williams is a university professor. He lives in Southern California with his wife and two kids.

Product review: Travel-friendly Scotch tape dispenser

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If you’re like me, you take a small list of items in your carry-on that most travelers don’t bother packing. Whether your handy item is a diaper pin (to pin your sweater on the seatback in front of you on the plane or to pin your ID tag inside your carry-on) or a small container of baby powder (to keep your feet from feeling too sweaty when it’s hot, or lessen the greasy-haired look if you can’t get to a shower for another day), these small items take up very little room but can be very handy and have multiple uses.

One of those really handy items is a roll of adhesive cello tape. Most of us are most familiar with the Scotch brand. Scotch tape can be immensely helpful when traveling. Besides keeping paperwork together when you don’t have a stapler, you can use strips of these as a lint remover, cover up a small cut when you don’t have a bandage, prevent a snag in your clothes from getting worse, provide endless entertainment for a toddler on a plane, and so on.

Honestly, the only inconvenience about a roll of Scotch tape has been its dispenser. The zig-zagged edge made cutting the tape handy, but the cutting end stuck out, and took up a lot of space; space you don’t want to give up when you’re traveling with just your carry-on.

Manufacturer 3M has come to the traveler’s rescue with a brand new Scotch tape dispenser in the form of a plastic donut.

Scotch Magic Tape in a donut dispenser

Scotch Magic Tape in a donut dispenser

A quick glance shows an obvious difference to a regular tape dispenser. This is a completely enclosed, round plastic donut with no extraneous parts.

A traditional dispenser (left) next to the new Donut dispenser.

A traditional dispenser (left) next to the new Donut dispenser.

The convenience for travelers is that the donut dispenser can be tossed into your carry-on, but can also just as easily get tethered to your bag  using a short string or bead chain. As an added convenience, having a brightly colored plastic ring on your carry-on gives you a quick and easy way to identify your bag as yours.

You’re probably looking at this donut dispenser and wondering how the dispenser actually works. Is it just a plastic ring with tape inside, that you have to untwist to get to? Nothing so difficult. If you look closely, you see a white tab on the dispenser. That’s the opening. On the top of the white tab on both sides are two little round nubs of plastic, which you flick to open the tab. The tab itself is hinged, so when you flick the tab open, the little jaw opens up and shows up a peek into the inside of the dispenser.

Inside, is a standard roll of Scotch tape with the familiar green checkerboard bit of tape that indicates the start of the roll. The plastic dispenser consists of two halves of a donut; just wiggle it a bit and pull the two halves open. Once you open the halves, just pull the starter tape out and pull it onto the white tab. Close the halves up again, and you’re set to go.

The white tab acts as the dispensing portion of the donut.

The white tab acts as the dispensing portion of the donut.

Whenever you want to use some tape, just open the white hinged tab. Pull out whatever amount of tape you want, cut it on the jagged edge of the white tab, then snap the white tab shut and you’re good to go. The white tab snaps into place and will not come open on its own, but it can be easily unsnapped and unhinged with one thumb or finger.

You’ll read some negative reviews of this product online, but it looks like people get frustrated by overthinking this product. Some people aren’t happy that you have to fold the tape away before you close the tab, some people aren’t happy with the smaller roll of tape it comes with. The thing is, you don’t need to do anything with the tape before you shut the lid. The tape end stays stuck right on the teeth of the white tab, and the extra tape just folds over naturally when you shut the tab.

Once you're done with your tape, just snap the white tab shut.

Once you're done with your tape, just snap the white tab shut.

The best thing about this new donut dispenser is that it’s refillable with a standard sized roll of tape (of either the 1/2 or 3/4 inch variety); no need to find special tape for this dispenser.

Scotch sells a number of other special dispensers, including pre-cut pop-up tape dispensers. I’m not too keen on that one because, although it’s handy, it limits the length of tape you dispense at a time, and inch-for-inch, costs considerably more than a regular refill roll of tape.

The Scotch Magic Tape with Donut Dispenser comes with a roll of 300-inch tape. If you plan on using this a lot on your trip, you might consider swapping it out with your own larger refill roll. The dispenser comes in a variety of bright colors (purple, turquoise, lime green, pink, red), and you can buy it at most office supply stores for a few bucks. If you have trouble finding this at your store (in my experience, these seem to sell out often), pick one up online at Amazon, Office Depot, or any number of online stores.

Seven Deadly Sins of Air Travel Passengers

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I don’t usually link to the same site twice in a week, but FareCompare has its list of seven no-nos for air travelers that I think are pretty spot on (http://www.farecompare.com/articles/how-to-shop/top-worst-passengers-planes/).

Some of the things on the list are kind of silly (“don’t drool on your neighbor”), but on the top of the list? Not packing lightly. Here’s what the list says:

“There’s a lesson in that for all of us: pack right, and pack light. And use a carryon—this one simple act can save a family of four $200 on a flight. And if you must check a bag, keep it under 50 lbs—the overweight bag fees are a killer.”

By the way, my mom, on her recent trip to Japan, went nuts buying an entire suitcase full of second-hand books (Japanese books are, as you can imagine, more expensive in the U.S.). She was giddy at saving so much money, but it turns out a suitcase full of books weighs more than 50 pounds. She wound up having to pay a huge overweight bag fee, so she didn’t save nearly as much money as she initially thought.

Number 4 on the list is also appropriate: Don’t be a “bin hog.” Hey look, exactly what I was talking about. Here’s what the list says:

“We’ve all seen these bin hogs, who take up way more than their share of a plane’s overhead compartment bag space. My two biggest pets peeves involve people who  pull your carefully folded blazer out of the bin to make room for their own things, then stuff it back in, rendering the jacket completely unwearable—and those who try to jam too-big bags into too-small spaces, knowing that a flight attendant will remove and check the bag, at no charge to them.

“Mostly what I hate is how long it takes the bin hogs to get themselves situated, time that could be spent getting us to our destination, with an on-time arrival.”

The point?

  • Be a “traveliter” – packing lightly so you only have to take your carry-on.
  • Don’t be a “traveloader” – overstuffing your carry-on or using too big a bag as your carry-on and knowingly abuse the system.

Top gripe: Luggage fees

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Consumer Reports list of what annoys travelers the most

Pick up the current issue of Consumer Reports (June 2010). Besides a great article rating the current computers on the market, the issue has a special travel section where it rates the best and worst hotels; very helpful if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed trying to figure out what works best for your travel needs.

Tucked in the article, though, is a great little graph called “What Annoys Travelers Most.” People sure get annoyed at a lot of things, but the top annoyance is luggage charges. Those $25 fees sure add up.

Take a look further down on the list, though. In at #8 is something of particular interest to those of us who travel with just a carry-on: “People who hog carry-on space.”

Although I espouse traveling with just your carry-ons, I have to agree—it’s pretty obnoxious when people bring Jabba the Hut overstuffed carry-ons on board and try to squeeze them into the overhead. Unless you’re an elite-status frequent flier who gets early boarding privileges, you’ve probably boarded aircrafts where all the overhead space above your seat was already taken by other people’s luggage. As annoying as it is, that overhead space is a free-for-all; passengers can put their carry-ons in any space they wish, and there are those truly annoying ones who will purposefully stash their luggage in the overhead bins closer to the front of the aircraft for their convenience, even if they’re sitting towards the back of the plane. How rude and selfish can you get?

Remember: The Travelite philosophy is not how to take on board with you as much as you can get away with. People who use marginally acceptable luggage, overstuff then, then try to cram them into the overhead space, still fall into the “traveload” camp and they besmirch the good name of those of us who travel lightly.

Here’s a couple of real easy tips to remember, as you pack your carry-on for a trip:

  • Will this thing fit my airline’s carry-on bag sizer contraption at the airport?
  • Can I actually carry this thing around a block? Yes, even if it’s a rolling upright. I said “carry,” not pull on its wheels. Is it too heavy? Am I too out of shape? Does it not have a shoulder strap or a handle?
  • Can I actually lift this thing high enough that I can put it in the overhead bin by myself?
  • And most importantly: Is it soft-sided, pliable, or not overstuffed, so that when I put this carry-on in the overhead bin, I can slide it straight in, instead of spreading it out sideways and taking up more space? Extra points if you can actually place your carry-on on the floor under the seat in front of you.

Ever had a laptop stolen at an airport?

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Surprise, you’re not alone.

According to an article in the New York Times, approximately 12,000 laptops are stolen per week from airports around the world.  Each week.

There are some things you can do. Consider using a checkpoint-friendly laptop bag that lets you lay out your laptop bag on the security screening conveyor belt instead of removing it from the bag. Never place your laptop as the first of your items on the conveyor belt. By the time you’ve finished laying your plastic bin (with your shoes), your empty laptop bag, your purse, your carry-on bag, that laptop can be long gone. If you run the laptop in last, make sure you see it through as it enters the draped section of the X-ray machine so no one else will grab it back out on the other end.

Finally, if the worst happens and your laptop is stolen, what do you do? What if your flight leaves in half an hour; do you have time to file a police report?

According to the article in the New York Times, what you might want to do is buy some “spyware.” No, not the programs that sneak into your computer and steal your info, but programs you can turn on remotely, and which snoops around to find out information about your laptop’s thief! Different programs do different things, but they include things like record the IP addresses the thief uses to get on the Internet, take screenshots of various activity, and even remotely turn on your laptop’s webcam to take snapshots of the unwary burglar!

Read all about it in the article, found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/technology/personaltech/17basics.html.

FareCompare’s updated baggage fee chart

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Feeling a little confused about what each airline charges for bags? What about your first checked bag? Do you pay more for a second? What does an airline define as an overweight bag?

Fare aggregating site FareCompare has recently published its domestic airline baggage fee chart, and it’s a pretty handy list. If you’re trying to decide between a couple of airlines for an upcoming trip, check this chart first and see if you wind up coming ahead by choosing one airline over another. Just remember that many of these airlines don’t charge you when you book your ticket, so this won’t actually affect your travel budget until you actually show up at the airport and they tell you how much more to shell out for your big check-in suitcase.

The chart is broken down into two columns: Carry-on bags, and checked bags (and pets). A quick scan shows that Spirit Airlines is still the only airline that insists on charging people for their carry-on ($20 to $45).

All airlines have restrictions on the size of your carry-on, although most of them either have very liberal weight policies or do not specify a weight limit on your carry-on at all. That is, of course, except for Virgin (remember how I had to carefully weigh my bag to fit their requirements when I went to Europe a couple of years ago?).

All airlines allow you to carry on “one personal item”—amusing that both an umbrella and a women’s shoulder bag would qualify…

It looks like most airlines charge between $20 and $25 for your first piece of checked luggage. Your second piece of checked luggage will cost you at least as much as the first, although most airlines charge a hair more. You start paying some hefty fees though, when you have luggage that’s too big, weighs too much, or you travel with a gaggle of suitcases like Paris Hilton on her way to film a new reality show on location.

One surprise I didn’t expect was that Southwest isn’t the only airline to provide an allowance for free checked luggage. JetBlue doesn’t charge for your first checked bag! That’s where the similarity ends, though. While Southwest doesn’t charge for the second item, JetBlue charges $30. But hey, that first one is free.

As usual, traveling light pays off. Two people traveling round trip can easily save $80 on a trip by learning to pack just their carry-on.

Here’s the chart. Keep it handy next time you need to book your flight:  http://www.farecompare.com/how-to-shop/domestic-baggage-fee-chart.html