What Do I Pack?

Lessons learned in transit, translation, and transition

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I joined the military when I was 19. I was a bit of a slob as far as cleanliness was concerned, but I was also 19 and hadn’t yet grown to respect order as a means to better myself. I quickly learned to keep order and discipline in my gear from boot camp and on through basic training. I learned to pack light and I learned to pack things in tight which was a far cry from my existence as a civilian. I showed up to my first platoon after 1.5 years of training and 2.5 years of intent assuming as I always had that I knew it all. I was too na?ve and too proud to realize that I didn’t and I squandered many opportunities to better myself being overly confident in my intellect and athleticism. You may or may not be able to imagine when a platoon of men train for war, packing and planning are paramount skills to hone and develop. A kid of 22 with no real-world experience thinks the only skills a person needs to be successful are aggression, commitment, and determination. Those attributes took me to places, people, and situations I would have never seen otherwise, but they didn’t make me a Warrior Leader.

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What does becoming a leader have to do with packing?

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Maybe nothing at all, but when I pack, I am thinking ahead. I think of what could happen to my family and how I may be needed. I think of my responsibilities as a man and my duty as a veteran to our country. This probably has you thinking I’m inserting some pretty far-fetched gravity into packing a little bag for vacation.? There I think you’ve got it wrong. Packing for a trip, for a move, for regular travel, all mean you are preparing for the unknown. The way you pack defines your ability to foresee conflict. It doesn’t determine your ability to react, but it does play a major role in how you will BE ABLE TO react.

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Learning how to pack comes with experience. If you haven’t packed a ruck that weighs 120 lbs, full of communication, surveillance, and survival gear for a 7-day trip into the high mountains during snowfall, I would care to wager you’d do a poor job without help. Especially if you had to lug a crew fire lightweight machine gun that you will be servicing as a single person, along with that pack. Don’t forget your ammo. What I’m trying to convey here is simple. You won’t know how to prepare for the future until you take your training seriously. Packing for a weekend is a minor version of moving across the country in an RV, which is a minor version of moving INTO an RV. We like to imagine we’d turn into a post-apocalyptic survivor in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road without training. Without the ability to pack everything you need for a trip to the Bahamas, who are you kidding? If you’ve forgotten your sun tan lotion, who's to say you won't forget your knife, water bottle, or socks.

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My lessons learned in packing and planning have been hard fought over years of military small unit operations experience and of recent battles learning to downsize a home's worth of stuff into a 22” RV’s worth of stuff. I honestly can’t tell you which has been harder. Taking every necessity for living, traveling, and enjoying life in a small? trailer or packing everything I’ll need to survive and fight in the mountains for a week without replenishment. I can however break down those necessities into 3 categories: Transit, Translation, and Transition.

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You may again be thinking, this guy is an idiot, those are three synonyms. How could they possibly be pillars of a packing technique this loser also claims can help me plan my life?

Good question. I may be an idiot, but I do know that these 3 stages of packing are individualistic and important. If you already have a brilliant system of your own that you’ve honed over the years, you may still learn something. I’ve learned from many different masters of their craft in formal and informal settings to narrow down how I pack.

-These are fundamental rules. They do not apply to frivolities-

Transit

A core tenet in all of my packing travails has been the importance of packing for motion. In the RV I’ve learned from flat tires, empty gas tanks in the middle of nowhere, and frequent roadside breaks to relieve my tiny bladder of its disproportionate burden. I now pack my tools for tire changes in one place, I pack healthy lunches, and I have metal gas cans that will never be empty. I did most of this from the offset, very few times have I failed to enforce these self-proposed rules.

Every time I fail to prepare, the stars align and I’m punished for it. So through struggle I learn and relearn that? consistency is the key.?

Packing my kit and bags for a week in the mountains or for a trip through the nightmare that is O’hare airport, I likewise pack strategically for transit. In any situation I pack a change of clothes on my person in case the worst happens, I pack water and food, the ability to obtain more water, and a way to brush my teeth if I’ve got the room. In my ruck this would also mean food that I can reach in seconds, warm layers and rain layers I can unpack in minutes, and of course, ammo. If I’m expecting an air supply drop, a resupply convoy location, or a few checked bags, I strategize the same way. In the civilian world I bring a knife and maybe check a pistol. In the military world resupplies mean, ammo, water, food, and other simple necessities, plus anything you need that you didn’t know you would.

None of that information should have your jaw on the floor. In any situation packing for transit is about taking what is necessary and making sure it is ALWAYS accessible to you. The moment you don’t have it you will need it.

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Translation

The definition of translation we will be using for this instance is “the conversion of something from one form or medium into another”. How does this apply to packing? When I packed our RV for the first trip on the road I experienced what every RVer has experienced. I brought a lot of what I don’t need and not quite enough of what I do. After 2 years of living in this thing and MANY trips to the storage unit, I think I’ve got it right. When you plan a major trip there are thousands of factors to consider. You need a route, places to stay, clean water, food, and a way to keep warm. Those are bare bones but you may come to find after a year and 30 states traveled those plans start piling up. After you plan out the essentials to alleviate some of the headaches from everyday living, you’ll want to move on to the point of the trip. The experience. To experience the mountains you’ll need skis, mountain bikes, harnesses, trekking poles, rifles, and a whole other slew of potential fun time toys. Unfortunately, none of those toys translate very well to the beach. What do we need to bring? The only way we learned what to pack, and how to pack it on these long trips was to experience failure. Rusting mountain bikes at the beach and broken surfboards in the mountains teach loud lessons. These niceties will always come down to personal taste in the end but chew on this rule we made for ourselves.

The bigger the item in question is, the more days in advance have to be planned solely for its use.

How do we justify the bikes? Well, I’m glad you asked, because here lies our rule of translation. If you have an item that can be used for multiple purposes like the tiny milk frother? that we can use to stir and whip anything it is immediately awarded extra points to be deducted from its size. So, to simplify:

The more uses an item has, the less the size matters.

Any tiny object with hundreds of uses almost always gets a pass. However, the final part of the rule of translation now needs to be added:

The more necessary the use the more likely it stays

There is no perfect system for the full equation of

Size scale of 1 to 10 – (# of uses/necessity of uses scale of 1 to 10) = overall item rating

Because at the end of the day, we will all rate an item's necessity and its uses differently. My wife thinks a straightener is more necessary than a book of matches so she packs the straightener and I’ll pack the matches.

The key factor in that equation is to help you realize that the less useful an item will be to you on your trip the less you should want to pack it. The more useful an item you aren’t considering is, maybe pack it just in case. That’s making a plan like a warrior and a leader. Frivolity is the cardinal sin of survival. This is how I pack my civilian bags for a weekend bag to go to Tampa for SOF Week and it’s also how I packed my bags in the military. We used to say everything you pack needs to have at least 2 uses or you don’t bring it. So, I would always say "if that's the case lets leave these heavy ass radios". I was only partially serious.

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Transition

You might be thinking I worked some wordplay magic with translation but there is indeed no way transition can have any different meaning in packing than transit. They’re very nearly the same word. You’re right they’re close. What we need to extract from transition is different.

When packing for a long trip in the RV I always think to pack as if I’m going to be stuck there. What do we pack for that? I have cash, gold, guns, water, camping gear, and dry food. I’m not prepping for Doom’s Day in an RV so relax with that thought. I am, however, preparing for the worst. If our trip transitions into a nightmare I am going to be as ready as possible to face that for my small family.

The same goes for traveling as a civilian or in the military. You should be ready at any time for the unexpected. You couldn’t possibly be prepared to fight a bear in the mountains, but if you knew the fastest way to get your knife out of your pocket when you see the bear your brain will move your hand there before you think to do it yourself. Once you’re attacked by a bear in the woods, you’re no longer doing what you were doing. You have now transitioned to survival from the unknown.

In the military, we practice what is called a transition drill at nauseam. What is this drill? When your primary weapon goes click instead of bang you need to transition to your sidearm and win the fight.

There is no time to find out what’s wrong or make a plan to do something different. Your brain needs to be ready to transition.

To be ready for a transition you need to have drilled. You need to practice in your mind to prepare and if possible practice with your body. How do we do that while traveling? Pack what you might NEED. It’s a crazy idea to think you should pack something for every trip you ever take but will never use. Ask my tourniquet in my book bag.

When you transition from a ski trip to survival in a back bowl, white out, snow storm, you will curse yourself for going out without a beacon, GPS, knife and a plan. Don't let lack of planning and laziness take a place in your obituary. Plan for transition and be prepared to fight and win.

The earth won’t stop turning because of anything I just said. It’s all simple. Common sense rules will never go out of style. Learn to apply common sense to your travel and watch these common-sense rules trickle into your life. An incredible planner doesn’t achieve the remarkable, but rather achieves the regular a remarkable number of times.

That’s what makes a great warrior and a great leader. Being ready for anything, being surprised by nothing, and bringing what needs to be brought. Every. Single. Time.