ROUGHING IT

When it comes to packing up and moving out, I'd say I've been a master of the art since I was about twelve. I was a Navy kid. But apparently you can become overconfident.

Everybody packs their own toilet items when they travel, but I learned long ago to pack fast, travel light and to live off the fat of the land.

Thanks to the lusty nature of my grandparents, I have plenty of relatives scattered across the country, so it's rare that I'm faced with the expense of a motel. If I don't show up more than, say, once a decade, I'm generally welcomed with open arms.

That's one of the keys to traveling on the cheap: lots of first and second cousins.

But back to traveling on the cheap: it's not as if your hosts will miss a half-inch of minty plaque-fighting toothpaste. If you clean the screen on the electric razor after you've shaved, no one's the wiser. Since everyone knows me as a guy who combs his hair with a washcloth, if there are strange hairs in your brush after I've left the bathroom...well, it ain't me.

Everyone provides toilet paper, so I never pack any, but I'm choosy about having my own toenail clippers and the little knife I use to clean my fingernails, and while I have no qualms about grabbing whatever bar of soap happens to be lying around my host's shower, I kinda like wiping my underarms with my own stick deodorant.

I always toss a couple of contingency items into my kit: cotton swabs (which you shouldn't put in your ears, but do anyway because that's the only tool that does the job), a few of those anti-diarrheal tablets, a Band-Aid or two, tweezers (in case I pick up a splinter while rooting around in the nightstand of the bedroom I'm borrowing), one of those lip balms that clutter up your dresser during summertime but disappear at the first hint of winter, a book of matches, a packet of lens cleaner for my glasses (because the tail of my tee shirt doesn't always remove that rainbow of film that collects on them), the charger for my cell phone, spare keys to everything I own, a list of emergency telephone numbers (which I figure the cops will find if I'm lying dead at the side of the road), and a couple of foil-wrapped Alka-Seltzer tablets.

The emergency bottle of scotch is always - always - packed separately. After all, (a) I never drink in the shower, (b) my host usually has something worth drinking in his bar, and (c) I will never again be caught in a dry county after the airline has lost exactly half my luggage.

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