Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Travel Tip #005: Liquid Assets

I am in the midst of my own personal travel saga, which began when our flight to go skiing in Jackson Hole for the weekend was canceled this morning. We have managed to rebook ourselves on our own personal version of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (I'm the John Candy, JM is the Steve Martin), with an insane itinerary that includes all three of those modes of transport, as well as, ultimately (hopefully), skis.

But while I can't be sure that this crazy travel schedule will go off without drama or hitches, at least I learned a new trick to control the chaos inside my bags. Is there anything worse than when you open up your suitcase after a long day of travel and find that your shampoo has leaked all over your clothes? You may have taken one look at the gooey mess pooling under your silk dress and thought, "Why?" I'll tell you why: It's a little thing I like to call "Science". See, when you pour your shampoo (or lotion, or whatever weird beauty aids you are bringing with you) into those little travel bottles, you unwittingly are either overfilling them, or leaving air in there. When the plane climbs to higher altitude, there is less external air pressure on the bottle, allowing the liquids and contained air to expand. All that expanding stuff (yes, that is the technical term for it) has to go somewhere, so it pushes out of the bottle and onto your Jimmy Choos.
Next time, when you fill the bottle, leave a little room in it. Then, before you screw on the cap, squeeze all the air out of the bottle, creating a vacuum (the bottle should look a little caved in). Now, when the liquid expands, there is room for it in the bottle, and that's where it will stay.
Kind of like how I'll be in the Cincinnati airport tomorrow, I suspect.

P.S. Check back tomorrow for an exciting announcement. What is it? I'll never tell. Well, not until tomorrow, anyway.

4 comments:

Chloe said...

I hope that it is that you are pregnant and having triplets! And moving to Santa Barbara. LOL

mia said...

YESSS!!! I second Chloe!!!

Lily said...

Ha! None of the above, sorry! Do you really think I'd be taking three flights to go skiing if I was pregnant with triplets? I guess you also can't see this glass of wine I'm downing, either.

The Looking Glass said...

Can't wait for the big news