Here is an itinerary I don’t recommend: work all week, then fly on Friday from San Francisco to New York, arriving near midnight.Do intense client work all day Saturday.Get up before dawn Sunday and fly home.

Work all week, then, the following Friday repeat, except due to East Coast weather delays, get in at 2AM.

I just did it and while the work was great, I can definitely tell you this is no way to visit New York.

I travel all the time and one of my cardinal rules is to never, ever check baggage. Aside from the very real possibility of never seeing it again, there is the long line at check in and the longer wait at the other end for baggage to be unloaded. So, you can imagine my horror when TSA banned all liquids and gels, including toothpaste.

I do not want to buy toothpaste twice a week in a strange city when I travel, and I am not going to give in and check my bag over this little item. So, I hit on a great solution — tooth powder. I remembered it from when I was a kid. Drug stores don’t carry it anymore, but I found some in a health food store of all places, and have gotten it through security, no problem. Well, almost no problem. They always check my bag but then let it through.

The only draw back to tooth powder is the taste. I bought one for my colleague Bill Coy just before a recent trip we made to Honolulu, and as Bill said, “It tastes like Ajax.”

Still, it’s better than checking bags.