.

I hate business travel so I tend to eat too much and obsess about little things like making sure I've got milk in the room to go with the bathroom Mr. Coffee joe because seriously, I will hang myself from the sprinkler system spigot over the bed before I put that fake powdered "creamer" shit in my coffee.

Another thing I do to offset the fact that I'm not doing what I'd always rather be doing which is sitting on my couch at home watching ReplayTV'd "King of the Hill" and "Simpsons" with my kids is I obsess about my travel toiletry kit.

Nevermind that I usually forget to pack oh, say, underwear, or even one time I actually forgot to pack a suit when we were traveling to an out-of-town wedding. They divorced later, due no doubt to the curse I put on the entire ceremony by wearing a dress shirt (quickly bought at shop near the hotel, never worn again) under a sweater.

(To be fair, if some guy'd come to my wedding wearing a sweater over a dress shirt, I'd forever remember him as "that cheap schmuck who came to our wedding in a sweater." For the record, I could have bought an inexpensive dress shirt for $19 to go under that sweater, but I dropped $85 on a Joseph Abboud dress shirt, because I felt somehow that even though only the collar would show, the extra effort I put the gesture by spending needlessly would assuage the bad mojo. Nope. They split up within a year. My fault.)

It's because my focus is on my travel kit. That's where the soul of man lives -- in his toiletry bag. His deodorant, his nail clippers, his hair goop. Most importantly, his shaving cream, and his razor. Why the bag itself matters to me I can't say, but it does, so I've always tried to find really cool ones like this one.

My latest eBay score was this really excellent dark brown "Mellow Touch" cowhide leather Dopp Kit from the 1960's, never used and still with the original tags. I say Dopp not in the generic sense but in the literal -- this bag was actually made by Dopp, the company owned by Charles Doppelt, a leather goods designer from Germany who came to the US in the early 1900s. It's said that the Dopp kit was really designed by Doppelt's nephew Jerome, but either way, it was named the Dopp Kit, and issued to US soldiers during WWII. Doppelt eventually sold his company to Samsonite in the 1970's.

This Dopp Kit is so cool I can't stand it. I carried around a $20 soft nylon Tumi travel kit for years, and never thought much about it. It was black, nylon, waterproof, soft, zippered. It held stuff. Fit in my suitcase. The Dopp Kit, on the other hand, is a thing of beauty. It smells as good as it looks, with that old leathery smell you don't really get from leather goods anymore.

What I've got shaving-wise in my Dopp Kit right now as I sit in this hotel room away from my family:

Gillette Super Speed DE razor
5-pack (well, 4-pack now) of Swedish Gillette DE blades
Dovo travel brush inna tube
Taylor's Shaving Shop shaving cream
Trumper's Lime Skin Food

I find shaving like a pampered Little Lord Fauntelroy helps mitigate being on the road away from my family. I could just throw a few Bic disposable razors into my Dopp Kit and use hotel soap to lather up with like I used to, but I used to do a lot of stupid things I don't do anymore. I used to go to Super Cuts and ask the fattest stylist to lay her hand on my scalp and cut the hair that went past her sausage fingers. I called it the "Chia" cut. I don't do this anymore.

So today, in a strange hotel room in a strange city on a strange gig, I got an amazing shave, and I got to ogle my cool-man Dopp Kit from the 60's, and it all made me feel a little bit better about the whole thing. I though maybe the Super Speed would be a let-down after a few days shaving with the incredible Featherjector, but I'll be damned if this timid little Gillette (loaded, it must be said, with the excellent Swedish blade) didn't shave me just as well, and maybe weller. I got a super close shave and without the tingle I like from the Featherjector but probably shouldn't like because it means I drilled too deep.

And lo and behold -- tonight room service brought my turkey club along with a big box full of what I call chocolate turtles but what Marie McGhee calls Bumblebees.

Has to be the Dopp Kit.