Safety is so important when traveling alone. As more and more women are traveling for business, some hotels are creating special programs to keep women safe. However, there are a great number of safety precautions we can take, regardless of where we’re staying. I have compiled a list of tips for being safe in a hotel, and will follow it up in the next few weeks with tips for other situations. This is by no means a comprehensive list, so if I missed one of your favorites, please put it in the comments! Travel safely, friends.

Before you go:

• If possible, choose national hotel chains with indoor room entrances.
• Don’t put your home address on your luggage tags. Put your business address.
• Make sure you have directions to your hotel. Also have their phone number and address handy. (This sounds obvious, but the last time I went to Salt Lake City I went to the wrong location of Hampton Inn, and then couldn’t find the correct location and drove around lost for thirty minutes. I finally found the phone number on my iPhone and the very nice man stayed on the phone with me until I got there. I should know better than this!!)

When you arrive:

• Use valet parking if it’s available. It may cost more but it’s much safer then wandering around a parking garage
• If the desk person says your room number aloud, ask for a different room.
• Ask for two keys—otherwise people will know you’re traveling alone.
• Avoid staying on the first floor whenever possible, especially if there is outside access to your room.

In your room:

• Make sure you have a deadbolt, and keep your deadbolt locked whenever you’re in the room.
• Make sure there is no door connecting to another room.
• Never put the “Please Clean My Room” sign on the door. It’s an open invitation to thieves! Call housekeeping instead.
• Don’t use the door sign provided for ordering breakfast. This alerts anyone who looks at it that you are ordering for one. When they knock, make sure the person with your food is a hotel employee.
• If someone knocks on your door without you requesting anything, check to see who it is. If it’s a hotel employee, call the front desk to find out if it’s legit. If it’s not, speak through the door without opening it.
• When you leave your hotel for the evening put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door. This makes it look like someone is there.

Readers, what are your best hotel safety tips?

It’s always nice to get something for free! National Car Rental has a promotion going on right now called “1,2, Free,” which rewards Emerald Club members with a free rental for every two rentals from August 22^nd-January 31^st 2012. Additionally, participating members can earn a free rental day for referring a friend (pretty awesome, right?!) To take advantage of this promotion, you need to be an Emerald Club member, which is super easy and free and gives you special privileges every time you rent a car from National.

So, in honor of the “1,2, Free” campaign, I thought it would be fun to hear what you would do with your free day. To enter the contest, write a comment about how you would spend your free rental car day. (I, personally, would use my day to drive around Napa and taste wine with the Home Warrior surrounded by that beautiful scenery.) You could win a $100 gas card from National!  The winner will be selected at random from all of the entries, and announced on Friday, September 2. As always, only one entry will be counted per person, and this particular contest is for US residents only (sorry international readers!).

Also, if you get a minute, definitely check out the “1,2, Free” promotion.  As a bonus for me, if enough of my readers click on the link, I will get to be the National Car Rental Featured Travel Pro! So help a girl out, and click on the link.

My own over-stuffed travel purse

You’ve probably seen it happen–someone walking down the aisle of an airplane, totally focused on what’s ahead of them, and completely unaware that they are hitting everyone already seated with their bag. This past week, the woman in front of me on our normal sized Super 80 (so not a small plane with a smaller aisle) was pushing her rollaboard in front of her and had her large purse on her shoulder. As she was walking by a group of people already seated, she literally hit a woman in the face with her purse. Obviously, she wasn’t trying to be rude, she was just completely oblivious.

My recommendation: don’t keep your purse or briefcase on your shoulder—hold the straps in your hand. Then either pull or carry your rollaboard, depending on how narrow the aisle is. It’s not as comfortable this way, but at least you have more control over where your bags go. And you’re more likely to avoid hitting someone in the face.

One of my favorite charities is called Bead for Life. Except it’s not a charity, exactly. It’s a group from Colorado that sells jewelry made by Ugandan women out of colorful recycled paper. There are necklaces, earrings, and bracelets, with different lengths and sizes of beads available. The necklaces, of which I own several, are beautiful, well-priced, and (of course) travel friendly. Plus you get to help women beat poverty! What’s not to love? They also make great presents–last year I bought ten and gave them for Christmas to my female relatives (of which I have many). You would never look at my turquoise necklace and think, Those beads must be made of paper. Instead, compliments come from all directions, because it is unique and lovely. I highly, highly recommend Bead for Life.

Ah, the bulkhead. One of the best seats on the plane! Extra leg room, no one in front of you, a place where you can spread out all of your stuff and finally be comfortable. Or is it? So thought the woman sitting there on my flight early yesterday morning. She sat down in her seat, put her tote bag in the corner in front of her, and got out her water, magazine, purse, and snacks, and set them down around her feet. Obviously, not someone who flies all of the time. The flight attendant came over and let her know that she couldn’t have anything by her feet, and that both of her bags needed to go into the overhead bin. She freaked out. I mean, I could hear her side of the conversation with the flight attendant three rows back. “There’s plenty of room! Why can’t I have my purse? I have to have my purse! What if someone steals it?” Etc.

The bulkhead can seem like a great place—you really do have lots of leg room. But if you are paranoid about your possessions being out of sight for a period of time or need lots of stuff for a flight, it may not be the place for you. For a reason I’m not completely clear on, you are not allowed to have anything at all around your feet, not even behind your legs. (I think it has something to do with needing the area around your feet clear if there is an emergency and you have to run off the plane) If you do sit there, it’s easiest if you don’t need much besides a book or magazine. Certainly you can work there, just make sure your laptop or whatever else you need is close to the opening of your bag—it’s tricky to rummage around while the bag is in the overhead bin. Whatever you do, don’t force your bag under your seat—then you are taking away from the room of the person behind you.

Eventually, the woman yesterday gathered all of her things together and put them in the overhead bin, sighing loudly to signal her displeasure the whole time. (If she had listened to the flight attendants’ announcements in the first place, she would have known the score before she sat down. But that’s a rant for another day….) After takeoff, she loudly excused herself to the person next to her as she went to pull her purse out of the overhead bin. “So sorry! But I had to put all of my things up there, and I need them, so I have to go in front of you.” Passive-aggressive, yes. Oh well. Next time you sit in the bulkhead, try to be nicer and more prepared than her! Your fellow passengers will thank you.

Erin! Her “stickiest travel situation” was tricky indeed, as well as pretty funny. She was randomly selected from all of the entries using the random number generator at Random.org. She will receive a Kindle and a Mitchum stick, courtesy of Mitchum’s “Love Thy Pits” campaign. Thanks Mitchum!! And thanks, Readers, for sharing your worst travel stories.

Erin’s story:

Back when I was 27, my boyfriend, two of his friends and myself decided to go to Europe for a month. We were planning on traveling as cheaply as possible, had rail passes for the whole time there and were planning on making use of hostels as much as possible.

Well he proceeded to really piss me off, almost immediately upon landing, so the whole trip instead of being boyfriend and girlfriend, we were just unfortunate roomates.

It was either that or I was going to have to bunk in with one or the other of his male friends because none of us could afford single rooms. So for a whole month we shared the same bed, all the while barely speaking to one another.

I managed to have a decent trip because really who wouldn’t when you’re in Europe for the first time. But coming back and going through customs, the one thing that I had forgotten until the custom agent pulled them out of my suitcase were two very large baggies filled with my unused contraceptive sponges. Since obviously, I hadn’t needed them at all.

So as I stood there watching him holding one in either hand, up in the air and peering at them, all thirty of them, curiously. And then looking over at me.

I just knew that everyone in line behind me was pitying me for having such high expectations for my sex life and obviously having it fall well short.

If I had it to do all over again, I would have thrown them away before going to the airport or left them somewhere that maybe someone could have used them, even if they were expensive.

Last weekend, yet another friend told me a story about checking a bag that the airline then lost. Of course, this friend was on his way to Mexico for vacation, not on a business trip. When he asked me how to avoid this being a problem in the future, I realized that the principles are the same, no matter the type of trip. So here are my tips for minimizing the impact of the an airline losing your suitcase, regardless of whether you are traveling for work or fun.

1. Pack the necessities in your carry-on. For a work trip, that might be your chargers, files, and laptop. For a vacation, could be your swimsuit and sunscreen. Whatever the most important items are for your trip–make sure you’ve got them with you!
2. Wear work clothes. If you’re traveling on a non-work day and checking your bag, it’s better to wear something work appropriate just in case. Don’t worry, work clothes can be comfortable, so find something you can sit in for hours on a flight.
3. Keep your toiletries with you. Most hotels have basic toiletries in case you forget something. Some don’t, though, and my experience has been those are in the towns where nothing is open past 10pm. And good luck finding contact solution at a gas station! I’ve found it’s just easier to keep my toiletries with me when I check my bag.
4. Clearly label suitcase inside and out. Make sure your name, phone number, and address are on the outside and inside of your suitcase. If you have an unusual or hard to describe suitcase, it may even help to take photos of it on your phone.
5. List of internal contents. Should the worst happen, and the bag is lost forever, it will help you get reimbursed more quickly if you know exactly what was in your bag. If you are carrying something very expensive or unusual, take a photo. Having the original sales receipt is a bonus.

You all know that the number one strategy to keep the airline from losing your suitcase is to carry on. But that’s not always an option. With a little preparation, you can keep the damage to a minimum if your bag is misplaced.

Readers, what are your tips for minimizing impact should the airline lose your bag?

It’s not too late!! Due to the outage last week, I have decided to extend the contest one more day. If you still have a “sticky” situation to share, post it in the comments. You could win a Kindle!! Thanks to Mitchum and their “Love Thy Pits” campaign for the idea and the prizes.

The Home Warrior suffers from heartburn on a fairly regular basis. For years, he tried to deal using various methods—daily pills for prevention, OTC antacids, avoiding certain foods, etc. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that he found a sustainable way to deal with it when a pregnant friend shared her secret method: baking soda. Seriously. A teaspoon or so dissolved into water will make heartburn disappear almost immediately.*

This has been so reliable that a couple of years ago he started traveling with baking soda to avoid heartburn on vacations. For longer trips, he would just tape up the cardboard box we use at home and put it in a Ziploc bag. Of course, I couldn’t help but give him grief for yet another example of his typical overpacking tendencies. In response, for our Alaskan cruise vacation, he just dumped a bunch of baking soda in a Ziploc and stuck it in his suitcase. (You can probably tell where this one is going, right?) He even labeled it: “Baking soda for heartburn” on the outside of the bag. Needless to say, when TSA searched our bags when we came home through Vancouver, it was taken.

The moral of the story is this: if you are bringing white powder of any kind to an airport, leave it in its original packaging!! Whether it’s Splenda, baking soda, some sort of cleaning agent, whatever. If you want it to arrive at your final destination, don’t tempt the agents by having a random bag of white powder in your suitcase. To make matters even easier, now Arm & Hammer has a nice plastic bottle with a closeable lid. Although I’m still waiting for them to come out with single-serve packets…..

*Note: Road Warriorette is not a physician, so like with any OTC medication, consult your doctor before using baking soda for heartburn.

I almost titled this, “Get to know your local TSA agent.” But of course, that’s not what’s going on. They don’t really care if you know them, they want to know you. According to NPR, the TSA will now require every passenger going through Boston Logan to submit to a “quick interview” with a TSO. Various questions will be asked of passengers, such as where they are going and why, how long, where they have been, etc. They call it behavioral profiling, and it’s been used in Israel for years. Boston is the first, with a gradual roll out expected across the country at some point.

What if a traveler doesn’t speak English? Evidently, that doesn’t matter. They’re not really looking for the answers to your questions–they are looking for most behaviors  that are  “involuntary physiological reactions that a human being would not be able to repress.” Really? Like that guy on TV that can tell when people are lying? My experience with TSA has, for the most part, been totally fine (compared to a lot of horror stories you hear about). But I thought people looking for “involuntary physiological reactions” that last milliseconds have to be highly trained for years. Do they really think the average TSA agent will be able to see these reactions? I am very curious to see how this goes down. Of course, as the article says, ” as long as the bad guys believe this works, that’s half the battle.”

Readers, what do you think? Will this work?

A traveling friend recently confessed to me that she hates her twice monthly business trips. “I’m tired of being away from my husband!” she said. “Plus it’s so exhausting. And what about when I want to start a family? How will I do that and be gone all the time?”

Honestly, it kind of surprised me. She is definitely allowed to feel however she feels–business travel isn’t for everyone! But she’s traveled for years, and this is the first I’ve heard of any negative thoughts about it. I’ve traveled for work for over five years now, and while sometimes I feel passionately one way or the other about it, most of the time it’s….just what I do. There are certainly very busy periods where if I never saw DFW again it would be okay. But there are also periods where I’m home for weeks at a time, and I start getting itchy to go. Plus, I really like what I do. Sometimes I even love it. (Could they pay me more? Um, yes. But that may be a talk for another day.) Pictured: The heart-shaped rock my husband found on vacation.

So I am very interested in what is more common. Do you love business travel? Hate it? Is it just part of your job? As always, feel free to leave comments explaining your answer more.

Don’t forget about the contest from yesterday. It’s open until Monday, and you could win a Kindle!!

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