weekend fighting game trip and my med pouch held up

2026-10-22 01:48

did a three-day fighting game tournament two states over. my usual travel brain is all snacks and caffeine, but this time i packed my pen in a little insulated pouch with an ice pack and threw it in my backpack.

weirdly the hardest part was the 8-hour train ride and keeping the pouch from getting smashed under my arcade stick. i also swapped my normal two gas-station sodas for sparkling water and barely noticed.

didn't have any dramatic appetite stuff, just felt normal enough to eat a real meal instead of surviving on chips. small win: came home with the same snack budget i left with.

curious how you all handle a few days away without making it a whole logistics spreadsheet?

2026-10-27 15:25

The arcade-stick crush is so real. I put my pouch in a rigd pencil box, then wrap that in a kids’ old sock so it doesn’t slide around.

For travel days my snack drawer MVP is jerky + those little shelf-stable protein shakes, because convention food turns me into a gremlin. I also set two phone alarms—one for water, one for a quick walk down the aisle—mostly so I don’t sit for 8 hours and feel like garbage.

Did your ice pack actually stay cold the whole train ride, or did you have to swap it somewhere?

2026-10-28 20:25

the under-seat backpack shuffle is my nemesis on long trains. i clip my pouch to an inner loop with a tiny carabiner so it stays vertical, and put the ice pack in a snack ziploc so condensation doesn’t soak my hoodie.

for tournaments i pre-log jerky/electrolyte packets in my notes app and do a 2am caffeine cutoff check, otherwise i’m wired till the next bracket. did your soda swap survive the trip or did the venue vending machine win?