Productive Packing: Travel Disaster Recovery Plan

Having built and run a number of data centers and Software as a Service based applications, one of the most vexing (and thus overlooked or ignored) problems is the disaster recovery plan.  What do you do if the building housing your servers (or your business) burns down, is hit by a tornado, or abducted by aliens?  The business ramifications of a disaster are staggering and can spell the end to some companies.  When traveling, equally terrible things can happen to you.  While being abducted by aliens is out of scope of this post, loosing your wallet (or getting mugged), loosing your laptop case, or discovering you left your cell phone charger in the rental car three cities ago can all cause major disruptions.

I can remember just after September 11th, while traveling in San Jose, California, I lost my driver's license.  I didn't realize this until I got to the front of the security line forty minutes before departure of the last flight home on a Friday evening.  I got to spend a good chunk of my weekend in San Jose instead of at home, while I jumped through hoops with airport security.  Now I make sure that I have a disaster recover plan in place for traveling.  In addition to emergency contacts and the other common knowledge items, I do the following:

• Keep a separate form of ID (usually my passport) in my luggage, in case I lose my wallet.
• Keep a package of identifying documents at my house so my wife can fax them on demand.
• Keep some extra cash in my bag, in case of emergency.
• Keep a second cell phone in my bag in case of malfunction or loss.
• Keep an emergency charger (iGo has a great one) in my bag in case I discover that watching the season finale of Lost on my iPhone meant I didn't have enoug juice to make an important call after landing.
• Tag my laptop, phone, bag, and Moleskin journal with a "reward if found" identification sticker.
• Keep an extra credit card in my luggage.

Do you have a travel disaster recover plan?  I'd love to hear about it.

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