Travel Safety Document
8 April 2007 | how-to, travel | No Comments
In recent years I have become creative , some say obsessive, with my preparations for my trips. I have organized a few international and domestic bicycle trips for my friends and myself, and I’ve wanted to set these trips up in the safest, easiest, and most convenient manner possible. One great concern on my first Italy bike trip was what to do if I had my important documents lost or stolen. I brainstormed the problem: what is the easiest way possible to retrieve my money, identity in the most convenient way possible, and what is the simplest, safest strategy to keep my documents even if nothing happens. I came up with several steps to follow. The focal point in keeping documents safe in any situation is base on three pieces of technology: a digital camera, a computer with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and a USB flash drive. So, why follow these steps anyway? Having duplicates of all your documents is essential to quickly getting new IDs made, money lost, or credit cards replaced.
Step One: Digitally photograph all important documents- Take out your credit cards, ID, Passport, traveler’s checks, phone numbers, pages of tour books, tickets, and photograph both the front and back of these documents. In the case of your passport, photograph the inside page with your number and picture. I like to go one step further. I photograph or digitally scan the train schedules, bus schedules, travel itenerary, insurance information, maps, and even my house. OK, OK. some may ask, is this safe? What if my camera gets stolen, right? This is where step two comes in.
Step Two: add password protection to your digital documents with Adobe Photoshop- Now, download all these digital documents to your PC (or a friend’s if you don’t have Photoshop). Before you do all this, you may just simply get a storage device with password protection. I prefer a USB flash drive. I Googled “USB flash drive with password protection” and came up with many choices. If you want extra protection, here’s what you can do:
- Once you have these open, go to “Save As” in the File Menu (far left on the menu bar). You are going to save a copy of each document.
- On the “save as” screen you have to choose “Photoshop PDF” from the format choices. You may also want to click the “As a Copy” check box if you want to save the document as a copy.
- Now, click Save and a new box comes up titled “PDF Options” . Click on the check box marked “PDF Security” now click on the button next to this called “Security Settings”.
- Another box comes up called “PDF Security”. First, make sure that you chose the encryption level that says “128-bit”. Now click on the check box called “Password Required to Open Document”. This allows you to assign a pasword. Obviously, choose a password that you can remember.
- Now, confirm your password
- Finally! Now that you have the security set up, and you are in the”PDF Options” box, click OK and you are done! It’s alot faster the second time.
Now, try opening the file. Adobe Acrobat Reader will be the default program to open the file, and you can see that the file will not be displayed unless you can provide a password.
So, you’ve got all your most important documents password protected, now what?
Step Three: Store those documents. As I mentioned, I use the USB flash drive. This is really the best way to go because they’re so small and convenient. However, I would not make one copy, but two copies. One for your trip, and one for your relatives to keep at a remote location. Just in case everything is taken, hopefully you can give them a call to get the information you need!
Now when you’re on the road, you will have a new defense for any event… that is if you have fairly close access to a computer. Most countries I’ve been to have internet cafes close by, so I think you’re safe in most instances.
Leave a Reply
You can follow the discussion through the Comments feed. You can also pingback or trackback from your own site.