Everything that was in Nick’s bag for Million Mile Madness

Our Million Mile Madness challenge is in the bag, but one question I got numerous times on social media was about what, specifically, was in my bag. I did a rapid-fire Instagram reel showing how and what I packed, but many people asked me for links to the various things I brought. In this post, I’ll include links and descriptions / quick reviews for the things that were in my bag. Note that I’m including our affiliate links where applicable (and noting as such when I do), but in some cases you can go through a cash back portal to stack a better deal.

Packing it all up

If you find yourself not sure whether everything in this post could have actually fit in the backpack above, see this reel to watch it all come out:

 

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The backpack

Before I get into the contents, it makes sense to start with the bag itself: I carried a Tumi Alpha Bravo Navigation bag in black. I note that it’s black because some of the other color combinations of that bag are built a big differently — more on that in a section. Here’s a link to the bag I carried on Amazon (our affiliate link).

Let me say that this isn’t the bag I would prefer to have. I would much prefer the Tumi Alpha Brief Pack (our affiliate link). I had one of those, but I accidentally left a chocolate inside and a determined chocoholic of a mouse actually gnawed through the thing to get a taste of the sweet deliciousness of a Ritz-Carlton turn-down chocolate.

It’s kind of a long story as to why I have the Navigation bag instead of the Brief Pack, but I’ll just say that the Brief Pack is larger, has a few more zippered compartments (including one on the outside / top that I loved and a couple on the inside!), and in general I would prefer that bag if given the choice.

However, one thing I really did come to appreciate about the Navigation bag was the strong nylon loops on both the back and the shoulder straps. I kept a carabiner on one of the back loops and I frequently had my water bottle attached there. And near the end of the trip, when I eventually had to buy a cheap tote bag for the gifts I bought in the Christmas market and the pajamas and amenity kits from my fancier flights, I was able to move that carabiner to one of the shoulder straps and hang the tote bag from it rather than having to carry the tote in hand the entire time. This is why I am noting that I have the bag in black — some Navigation color combinations don’t seem to have these loops.

At the end of the day, I think that the Tumi Navigation pack is an entirely reasonable bag for a lot of people. It isn’t the best fit for me. But that probably says more about me. Still, it did the trick for this trip.

Now to what was inside….

Clothes

Merino wool shirts, socks, and underwear

• Interlock button-down shirt
• V-neck tee
• Polo shirt
• Second v-neck from Amazon (our affiliate link)
• Socks & underwear

Ever since our 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge a couple of years ago, I’ve become a believer in merino wool. Merino wool is frequently advertised as being resistant to odor and quick-drying. I can attest to both being true.

I brought 2 t-shirts, 1 polo shirt, and 1 button-down shirt on this trip (all merino wool). When I got home after 13 days on the road where I wore the button-down almost every day (with one of the t-shirts under it), I had my wife smell the button-down. She couldn’t tell that I hadn’t washed it. Yeah, I know that sounds gross. I did wash the t-shirts, socks, and underwear regularly, but not the button-down because it was thicker and I wasn’t sure whether it would dry as fast as everything else. I’m happy to report that I did wash it when I got home and I hung it in the closet overnight and it was dry in the morning just like the other shirts.

I made a separate Instagram reel showing how I did laundry in my room during the trip:

 

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I washed shirts, socks, and underwear that way. I didn’t wash stuff if I was only going to be in a hotel room for two or three hours, but at each stop where I had ~10hrs or more to be at the hotel, I washed the clothes that needed washing and hung them up overnight and they were dry by morning each time. That was so convenient! It was also very nice that my entire bag didn’t smell like dirty clothes throughout the trip because the wool stuff just didn’t pick up noticeable odor.

Pants

I brought three pairs of pants on the trip:

• Very lightweight Muji-brand “dress pants”. I can’t find the exact pair online — they feel sort of like a parachute — lightweight and almost more tracksuit-like, except designed to look like regular pants with belt loops.
• L.L. Bean zip-off hiking pants. I brought these specifically to have the flexibility of pants or shorts depending on the weather. I knew that I’d mostly be in cooler climates but wanted the option for shorts for those places where it would be 90+ degrees. I’ve had these pants for more than 10 years — they come on almost every trip and are still going strong.
• 5.11 tactical pants. This specific pair is no longer available and I can’t find a really comparable pair from the manufacturer today. This was a purchase I completely stumbled upon because of a sale and have had since 2019. In fact, this was the pair of pants I wore for most of our original 40K to Far Away challenge. I didn’t even plan to bring them this time, but I made a game-time decision that I needed some slightly warmer pants and I wore these to the airport — and proceeded to wear them for most of my trip. What I like about this pair specifically that I couldn’t find in a quick glance at newer models is that there are two front pockets on both sides and you get into them going straight down from the top. This makes it easy enough for me to have two phones in different pockets on one side or a battery pack and a phone and it means that my wallet is in a position where a pickpocket would have a very hard time getting to it since the pocket entry points aren’t really from the side but from above.

Jacket

Uniqlo ultra-light easily-foldable jacket

Another “stumble upon” situation was a Uniqlo ultra-light winter jacket that I bought more than 15 years ago. While it wasn’t my favorite-looking jacket, it was pound-for-pound the warmest item of clothing I’ve owned. I speak in past tense because the zipper finally gave up on me over the past year — it would zip closed, but then it would just start separating from the bottom. It was probably time for a replacement anyway.

And so just before the trip, I bought the one linked above (and paid $20 more than the Black Friday price). This was easy to pack away in its bag and put inside my backpack when not in use.

One very simple improvement they made with the newer model is that the bag that it packs in now clips inside the jacket. That’s convenient as I had long ago lost the bag for my original jacket and had usually packed it inside an old amenity kit. Glad to (hopefully) not lose the bag for a while this time!

Gadgets

Laptop

ASUS Zenbook 14 (our affiliate link)

The link above is to a more current processor — my laptop is has a previous-gen processor but otherwise similar specs (it’s actually this one that is “on clearance” (our affiliate link) for $250 more than the newer model). I’ve owned many different laptops over the years, but I’ve been really, really happy with the Zenbook.

I know that many frequent travelers prefer an even smaller form factor, but I personally don’t like to lose screen real estate. In fact, in coming down from a 15.6″ laptop to a 14″ laptop, I thought I’d be really annoyed by not having a separate number pad. However, ASUS packs a number pad into the mouse pad that you can toggle on or off. I’ve found it surprisingly good. Obviously you don’t get the feedback of physical keys, but I’ve found it accurately gets my touches and I’ve gotten used to it when I need a keypad to enter numbers.

I love the OLED screen — it’s bright enough to work outdoors / in the car / on a train by the window. I’m not going to likely use it in direct sun at the beach, but I like that it’s bright enough to be usable in most instances where I would actually try to use it.

Integrated graphics might be a problem if I were doing more video editing on the laptop, but since Carrie does most of our video editing, I thankfully don’t have to worry much about that.

The other key for me in this or any laptop is that it charges via USB-C. That means I use a different travel charger (covered below) when traveling and don’t bring the laptop power cord with me, which frees up space in my bag.

Battery life isn’t the best I’ve ever had in a laptop, but it’s good enough for me to be satisfied.

Charging implements

200W USB-C multi-device charger (our affiliate link)

This wall charger isn’t cheap. I’m not totally convinced that build quality matches the price tag — more on that in a second — but the convenience of this charger is hard to overstate.

That’s because this charger will put out up to 200W at once — including 100W each on two channels. I can easily charge both my laptop and my phone or battery pack at full speed at the same time with one charger. At night, I can plug in batter pack, phone, and smart watch, etc.

I like two other things about this charger:

• It comes with its own clip-on international adapters. That makes it easy to just clip on the right ending and plug it in.
• It comes with an extension you can connect. This is invaluable for those times when the weight of the charging brick causes it to fall out of the outlet. In those cases, I just add the extension cord and plug in to the wall or international adapter (unfortunately, I do still need to carry an international adapter for these situations since the extension is US-only).

There’s one thing I don’t like about this charger:

• I think it draws too much current for some airplane charging sockets. The outlet will repeatedly shut off because I think the charger is trying to draw too much power. I also carry a small single-plug USB-C charger for these situations.

I find the convenience factor to outweigh the cons and I now have a couple of these chargers at home, too.

Phone holder

Universal airplane phone holder / phone mount (our affiliate link)

Greg bought us these a couple of years ago after discovering them. He loves them for clipping the phone to a tray table to record a video in-flight. My family as often clipped one of these to the stroller to take a family photo or a luggage handle, etc. You never know when this is going to come in handy. It’s very compact, so I love having it in my bag for those instances where it becomes useful.

Insta360 x4

Insta360 x4 at Dell

I’m linking this at Dell above rather than elsewhere because I used Business Platinum credits to purchase mine (remember that Dell will let you split tender over up to 3 payment methods). I stacked with a Capital One Shopping offer for 27% back at Dell.

Greg had brought one of these on our Party of 5 trip and I think that if you asked Greg or Carrie about it, you’d get very mixed reviews. The 360-degree footage can induce some motion sickness if not edited well, and therein lies the challenge: you can only edit in their proprietary software and there’s a learning curve.

That said, at the tail end of our recent challenge trip, I finally synced up my phone with the camera and I was surprised at how much I kind of enjoyed trying my hand at editing footage. If you saw my Christmas Market reel, a lot of that was shot on this camera.

I don’t think this probably makes sense for most people, but I particularly look forward to having some fun using it to make some family videos where I can kind of capture everyone without having to think about where I’m pointing the camera.

Earbuds

Pixel Buds Series A (our affiliate link)

I actually brought both the Pixel Buds Series A and a set of Pixel Buds Pro — I’ve been using both for much of this year. After plenty of hours of use, I can confidently say that I prefer the Pixel Buds Series A.

The Pixel Buds Pro add active noise-cancellation and there are times when I appreciate that, but I find the Series A to just fit more comfortably. I like the little rubber stabilizer. The Pixel Buds Pro annoy me after a while. It takes much longer for the cheaper Series A Buds to bother me.

For the record, I usually prefer to travel with both earbuds (often for daytime use, especially to listen to something quickly while out and about) and over-hear headphones (for use on planes or when working on a hotel lobby late at night), but this time I just didn’t have space for over-ear headphones.

Battery pack

Anker Power Bank (25,600mAh) (our affiliate link)

This power bank is just under the limit for what you can bring on a plane in places where that’s closely scrutinized (as people warned, they did check it at security checkpoints in China).

I carry this power bank because it will charge my phone multiple times on a single charge and in a pinch it can run my laptop for a bit. Yes, it’s thick and heavy. I’m fine with that — I want the extra juice when I need it.

International adapter

International power adapter with USB ports (our affiliate link)

I only ended up needing this once or twice in a lounge where my charging brick was just too heavy and I ended up needing the extension, but it did come in handy those couple of times. I no longer use any USB-A cords, so while some will find the USB outlets on top useful, I’d probably look for a more modern USB-C variant if I were in the market for an international adapter today.

Miscellaneous stuff

Folding daypack

4Monster Hiking Daypack (our affiliate link)

This was a last-minute reader suggestion that I literally got in the mail the morning I left for the trip — and I’m glad I did! I don’t know enough about similar products to recommend this over others like it, but I’ll definitely be carrying a bag like this in my bag in the future.

The reason a reader suggested it is because I mentioned that I was going to put a drawstring bag inside my backpack to have extra space to put stuff if and when I needed it. The reader recommended this saying that actual straps are much better than drawstrings (which do get very uncomfortable for me pretty quickly). They were right — I carried this around several times and found it didn’t give me any discomfort. The side mesh was sturdy and deep enough to hold my water bottle. The bag itself is obviously very thin and light — like if you have money in it, people are going to see through it and know that and if you have a bunch of oddly-shaped stuff, it’s going to probably be uncomfortable. But for carrying an extra set of clothes or that sort of thing, this was very handy.

Sunglasses

KITS.com McNelly

I’ve been ordering my glasses online since at least around 2006. I’ve ordered from a number of different sites but have become really happy with Kits.com. Most frames, including standard prescription lenses, have been $28 for the past couple of years, but it looks like they just increased prices to $38 within the last month (bummer, though I get it). They do carry more expensive “designer” frames if you want those as well. I find that quality is much higher than the cheaper online glasses I’ve purchased. The glasses are made in Vancouver and ship quickly (I usually get my order in just a few days).

Note that lens add-ons (particularly for polarized sunglasses) do become significantly more expensive (think around $100 for prescription sunglasses when not on sale). However, lens upgrades are often on sale and you can do better. As is always the case, if you have a particularly strong prescription and/or specialized lens type, I imagine things may get more expensive. At any rate, both the sunglasses and eyeglasses you’ve seen me wear in recent years are Kits.

Toiletries

I don’t carry any fancy toiletries, I just re-use an old amenity kit and keep an amenity-kit toothbrush, toothpaste, and some other essentials like shaving supplies.

The one thing worth mentioning here is that I do use a couple of Cadence Capsules. These were recommended by a reader as a gift to give my wife. They are small screw-down containers that never leak (they’re well-constructed) and they are magnetized, so they stick together and you could display them in an eye-catching way if you wanted to. I use a Jack Black shaving substance (our affiliate link) and I keep some of that in a Cadence Capsule along with some after-shave cream in another. Putting it in these capsules means that I never have a toiletry explosion in my bag, which is especially important when I’m packing all of my electronics and clothes in the same bag.

Bottom line

None of the above in this post is to suggest that any of this is “the best” of the particular product or genre, but rather I got a number of messages from readers asking for links to various things in my bag. Given that the big shopping holidays are upon us, I figured no better time to share what was in my bag. If you have recommendations for better similar products, by all means share your own recommendations in the comments (although note that comments with links get caught in the spam filter).

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