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[schoolmarm]

I've posted the big long story in the international section, but thought that those of us who travel internationally for business/research might want to share ideas on how to get our books and equipment to the research site and home again.

(I am missing 29 pounds of books and research that I sent myself from Germany.  They repacked my remaining damaged items into a smaller box.  Who? Don't know?  Care to help solve the mystery?  Go to the international forum for my missing mail post.)

With new limits on luggage weight, carry-ons and now my discovery that shipping things isn't safe, I'm wondering how to travel with the equipment that is needed for research.

I usually travel with a laptop, thin scanner and the cords with international plugs that go with these items.  This last trip I had a digital video camera to record interviews. 

I certainly don't mind putting my toothpaste and shampoo in the checked bag.  I DO mind putting the laptop in the checked bag.  The scanner can go in the cargo hold, as it is not so expensive and I wouldn't be too upset if I had to replace it.  I need to travel back to Europe at least four more times this school year on top of my domestic travel.

Any ideas?

[aandsdean]

Schoolmarm,

I'm sorry about your loss.  I once sent a box of books home from England and when it arrived in the US it had about 1/3 of the books, plus a pocket knife, a money clip, about 35 cents in change, and a few other small things (none of which had been mine) shoved into it.  The box looked as though it had been mauled by a bear and reassembled with packing tape.  It wasn't pretty and it made me angry.  I hadn't insured it as I thought it wasn't too much to ask the PO simply to do its job, and the books missing were paperbacks.  But it wasn't good.  I continue to wish bad karma to the Royal Mail.

We have a program in SE Asia which requires a number of our faculty to travel there multiple times per year.  This is excellent for their frequent-flyer mileage and enables them to take numerous free trips to other places in the world, as it's a 25,000-mile roundtrip and with various bonuses one soon winds up with hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles to use.  What several of these people have begun to do is buy cheap laptops to leave there and just burn stuff on CDs or DVDs for travel. 

I seriously recommend this practice.  You can get a usable though basic laptop for less than $600 these days.  Think about how worth it that would be relative to the problems you might otherwise incur.  If you have a safe place to leave it while you're back home (friends' house, etc.), it's so completely worth the money to save the heartache and anxiety that there's really not a good counterargument. 

The scanner--well, a cheap one is less than $50 now, so I'd just leave that too....

Good luck!