How to Fix a Stuck Handle in Your Suitcase and Luggage

When it comes to luggage disasters, we are no stranger to them.

One month into our year-and-a-half long trip I discovered that my bag had a rather sizable hole where the seams had come undone in the side. We then came up with a rather robust backpack repair that lasted for the rest of the trip.

Shortly thereafter, we found out that my five-year-old backpack was falling apart even more– this time with more holes and a handle which refused to go down. 

We needed to decide whether to buy a new bag on the road, order a new piece of luggage online and get it delivered to us by mail, or try a luggage handle repair just to endure.

We decided to try one more fix, and wanted to share our technique for what we did to help if you wind up in a similar situation to us on your next trip abroad.

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How We Got a Refund on a Non-Refundable Plane Ticket

For the first route change of our year-and-a-half long trip, we were hit with a big one.

Just a few weeks before heading to Egypt a new batch of protests began. These protests were not like the previous ones, and I had a horrible feeling that our plans were about to change.

Within days of the protests that began in July 2013, the US government released warnings to avoid travel to Egypt as well as a “global warning” that was mainly focused on travel to the Middle East.

After discussing it with a friend who was coming to visit us in Egypt, we decided to change our plans.

We had one problem: Angie and I had already booked $857 worth of non-refundable plane ticket from Expedia for an itinerary of Istanbul to Cairo (Egypt Air),  Cairo to Istanbul (Egypt Air), and Istanbul to Bucharest (Tarom).

Not resigning ourselves to lose that money, our quest to cancel our Expedia itinerary and get a refund began.

If you find yourself in a similar scenario, you may need to try one of the following methods to get a refund for your non-refundable plane ticket.

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If You Are Considering Crowdfunding Travel – Stop!

Hi There Crowdfunding Traveler!You probably got this post emailed to you by either myself or another traveler in response to your request for us to crowdfund your next trip.   For everyone else, this one is not for you.

I can understand that you don't have enough money to travel on and need a bit of help; most of us don't reach our ultimate goal either (I know we didn't).  We make our plans, save up what we can, and hope that our over-spending is minimal such that we can do it all on the funds we managed to save.

After all, financing a RTW trip can be a tricky thing. You wouldn't have considered crowdfunding travel if you weren't in the same boat either.  It is a popular thing to do these days and we get several emails a month from people asking us to donate, share, and write about their campaigns on our sites.

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How To Fix a Hole in a Backpack in a Few Simple Steps

Not but three weeks into our year-and-a-half-long journey around the world did I realize my backpack had a hole in it.

Not just a tiny hole, one that you'd see after it was scraped against something sharp, but a big gaping hole along a seam that was only going to get bigger with each passing day.

Although my pack was almost 5 years old at the time, I was surprised that this had happened so quickly.  Not only that, it was at the bottom of the bag, one of the worst places it could have occurred.

Cue panic.

After a few minutes composing ourselves, we figured out a rather robust repair that lasted the duration of our trip.

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