Traveling with Rope, your opinions please.

Yesterday a supplier and I were talking about upcoming conventions and how the economy may or many not be impacting turnout and of course the ever important product sales. As I have said before, for me conventions are fun but with more and more sales via online they have become almost a burden trying to keep up with existing orders while building stock levels for sales that may or may not be there. However for smaller, boutique kink vendors conventions are their bread and butter, one of the few opportunities they have to get in front of potential customers and pitch their wares. It is a tough position to be in, travel is expensive and a bad show with low turn out and low sales can really push a company quickly into a dangerous financial place.

Why am I saying this? Because I've been there, early in my career, standing behind an untouched table on the last day of a convention, wondering how the hell am I going to pay for getting all this stock back home to Seattle. Thankfully those moments were few and these days the Twisted Monk brand has grown to a place where traveling to a convention is no longer a necessity for maintaining a healthy bottom line.

But I digress, the interesting point of the conversation was this. With all the negative economic news these days and airlines now charging more and more for every checked bag, how will this impact those of us who travel with something as heavy as rope? Granted, when I travel to a convention to sell I'm normally checking 6-9 bags in at a time (this is over and above the stock/personal rope/show gear I've pre shipped out beforehand), however rope is heavy and most rope people tend to have some pretty hefty kits.

And to that end, I pose the question to you, dear reader, how will your travel budget change in 2009?