Rochester, New York

There's an adage from somewhere that says "pack everything you know you'll need, then only take half of that". While silly, it illustrates the point that you rarely need what you think you do when traveling.

I'm a huge fan of traveling as light as possible, and on this trip I'm bringing nothing but a small backpack with my laptop, and my iPhone. No Digital SLR camera, no heavy clothing, minimal toiletries, etc.

I specifically bought a new Adidas bag for this trip as my normal backpack is too heavy to begin with. The new bag has a compartment for my computer and plenty of space, but I'm only using half of the space. Every extra pound on your back significantly decreases the time you can spend walking around with it.

Having comfortable shoulder straps and comfortable shoes is essential - I'm taking my Adidas Barricades tennis shoes which, while looking a bit tacky, are extremely comfortable walking or running shoes.

Check out the photos to see what I packed!

To help pack in as much travel as possible I first collected an inventory of JetBlue routes to the west coast and back through JFK and Boston - to my knowledge JetBlue doesn't have a published recent timetable. From there I optimized the trip based on several factors:

* Maximum red-eye flights - it's a free night's sleep!
* Arrange for 2 day stays over the two days I can't fly: Friday and Sunday.
* Stay more than one day in: Seattle, New York, Boston, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
* Arrive in west coast cities as early as possible for a full day's visit.
* If at all possible connect through JFK over Boston since there is wifi and I prefer T5 over Boston's crappy Logan airport.
* I'm moving to San Diego in November so would like at least some time there to look at apartments, etc.

With these optimizations in mind I've come up with the following (tentative) itinerary:

SEP-7: ROC -> JFK, JFK -> SLC [2:59PM - 6:19PM]
SLC -> JFK [11:40PM - 5:55AM]
SEP-8: JFK -> SAN [8:30AM - 11:30AM]
SAN -> JFK [8:47PM - 5:00AM]
SEP-9: JFK -> SFO [9:59AM - 1:13PM]
SEP-11: SFO -> BOS [9:35PM - 6:07AM]
SEP-13: BOS -> DEN [9:55AM - 12:32PM]
SEP-14: DEN -> JFK [1:00AM - 7:00AM]
SEP-14: JFK -> SEA [10:50AM - 1:46PM]
SEP-15: PDX -> JFK [10:45PM - 6:54AM]
SEP-16: JFK -> LAX [11:00AM - 2:03PM]
SEP-18: LAX -> JFK [9:05PM - 5:22AM]
SEP-20: JFK -> LAS [10:21AM - 12:57PM]
SEP-21: LAS -> JFK [11:59PM - 7:47AM]
SEP-22: JFK -> PHX [9:05AM - 11:32PM]
PHX -> JFK [11:30PM - 7:03AM]
SEP-23: JFK -> ORD [9:55AM - 11:26AM]
SEP-25: ORD -> JFK [6:35PM - 9:52PM], JFK -> ROC [10:35PM - 11:56PM]

20 Flights
8 Red-Eyes
4 West Coast Day-Trips (Fly out morning, red-eye back)
16 Trans-Continental Flights