Traveling with a child can be challenging. That is likely something of an understatement. Until they get to be about 4 years old, children are uniquely unsuited to the rigors of travel. As adults we accept the depressing reality of travel inconveniences because we understand that in many ways it’s unavoidable and required to reach our destination. Unwanted molestation at security checkpoints, terrible and expensive food, uncomfortable seats, loud droning noises, hours of sitting quietly and waiting for something, anything, to happen; these are all things that, while we tend to dislike, we’ve come to terms with in some ways.
Children live in the moment though, and they won’t put up with that crap. Not without making your life hell. They cry, they scream, they throw food. In the time it takes you to blink while sneezing, they will disappear from sight and begin a curious assault on the pilot’s cabin. They will pick up anything that contrasts with the floor, and eat it. Toddlers are especially bad about this, because it’s impossible to reason with them, or explain why they have to be so terribly inconvenienced.
That’s just one heinous part of traveling with a toddler though. On top of the significant challenges of removing a small child from their comfortable environment while mitigating the terror they inflict on everyone around them, there is the additional challenge of equipment.
Toddlers are like mid century Italian sports cars. They’re fun to have around, but they are ludicrously high maintenance and require the frequent use of highly specialized tools. Not even counting the assorted extras necessary to maintain proper trouser hygiene, toddlers require special chairs for meal time, special tools to cram food in their gullet, a special bed to prevent death and nighttime wandering and a special chair just to sit in a car.
Hotels tend to have cribs, and restaurants tend to have high chairs, but the car seat is a different thing altogether, and it’s really only a significant problem during the toddler years. When they’re infants the car seat is a multipurpose device that they will happily sleep in. It’s on the small side on account of the child being small, and has a large handle making it easy to tote around. Once they grow out of that though, things change significantly. The car seats are transformed into monstrous and awkward devices that weigh as much as the child. Because they’re designed for more or less permanent installation, they don’t have carry handles. Carrying one of these things around is about as easy as toting around a Barca lounger made for hobbits. It’s a pain in the ass, and absolutely essential.
When we started looking around for ideas on how to transport this thing, I recalled seeing other parents carrying around special made bags for things like strollers and car seats. It turns out there are only a few companies that make bags for car seats and they come in essentially two different styles, fitted and sack. The fitted bags are roughly the shape of the car seat, with desirable features such as shoulder straps, roller wheels, zipper closures, and extra pockets. The sack style is, literally, just a sack with a draw string and appear like they are designed only for gate checking a car seat. If they’re as durable as they appear, then you would likely get more protection from a plastic bag.
The most popular of the fitted style bags appears to be the JL Childress Ultimate Car Seat Travel Bag. I got it thinking it would be a valuable investment considering all the travel we were planning for the spring and summer, and we first used it on our trip to New York in March. The shoulder straps made it easy to carry the car seat like back pack. The material seemed durable and it had padding for the sides of the car seat. There were no extra pockets, but the zippered closure worked smoothly and the car seat fit in snuggly. I did note that there was really no way to secure the zippers, but the packaging claimed the zipper had a special features that would allow locking the bag. That “special feature” was the closed loop at the end of the zipper pull tab that is common on all metal zipper pulls. I guess if I had a spare piece of twine I could have tied a knot through the zipper pulls.
When we collected our baggage in Dulles, the Ultimate Car Seat Travel bag had burst it’s zipper, and our car seat was slid half out. Thank god I hadn’t taken the advice of the ticket agent who suggested I transfer some items from our over weight luggage in to the Ultimate Car Seat Travel Bag, or it would have been all over the conveyor belt. Still, the bag had done it’s duty and the car seat was unharmed, and the zippers appeared okay. While pulling the zippers closed, I also noted that the bottom of the Ultimate Car Seat Travel Bag now had two holes worn through the bottom. I can only presume the baggage handlers drug it around behind the luggage cart, doing wheelies on the flight line. I didn’t thing much of it. Normal wear and tear. If it got too bad I’d just give it some duct tape treatment.
This last weekend, Cameron and Logan went to Denver, and we again employed the Ultimate Car Seat Travel Bag. It was something of a life saver, and made it a lot easier for Cameron to handle the luggage without me. When she returned to Vegas though, we had something of a surprise.
When I retrieved her luggage from the conveyor belt at McCarran, this is what I found.
The entire bottom of the JL Childress Ultimate Car Seat Travel Bag had blown out, the seams neatly ripped. The car seat was again half out of the bag, but this time it protrude from the destroyed bottom. After just 2 round trip flights, the bag was completely useless. I think if I hadn’t seen the damage it had incurred after only a single flight, I would have been surprised. As it was, I was only curious and slightly irritated. The Ultimate Car Seat Travel Bag cost just under $50, so it wasn’t very expensive, but I still expected it to last longer than two round trip flights prior to a catastrophic loss of hull integrity.
I can’t say that I’d recommend a bag with such a swift failure rate. Maybe I had a faulty product. Maybe it got some extra rough treatment. I can’t say what caused it to fail, all I can say is it was a good thing it happened on the return flight, and that no damage was done to the car seat. If the car seat had been damaged beyond safe use, how would we leave the airport? Unlike Tom Hanks, no one is going to let my toddler live in the terminal.
