Business travel worries

I joined the Compact in January. The Compact is a group of people who have pledged not to buy any new stuff for some period of time (often a year, though many continue beyond that). So far, not shopping has been pretty easy. I was never very interested in shopping anyhow.

A few days ago, I found out I'm going to be going on a business trip to the Midwestern city were I went to college. This brought on a whole bunch of worries. How many days of meetings would there be? Do I have enough different sets of sufficiently professional clothing? Is my laptop backpack sufficiently professional and adult looking? What about a purse, stockings etc? I work in Silicon Valley, so work attire is informal. Even my boss, a senior VP, often wears jeans to work. I carry my laptop, wallet etc. in a very handy backpack that I bought before I started Compacting. Will that be OK? I don't want to look like a college student in front of a potential client. I'd also like to avoid buying (or wearing) nylon stockings. Nylons are such a waste since they often develop runs after having been worn only a few times. I usually wear white gym socks, but certainly that won't work for these meetings. I remember buying some black trouser socks last year. I guess I'll need to clean my house and find them before the trip. Any thoughts about carrying my stuff to the meetings? Should I use the backpack or hit the thrift stores and try to find something more "professional"?

The other thing that bothers me about travel is the CO2 emissions associated with air travel. According to Native Energy my plane trip will cause 1.395 tons of CO2 emissions. All that for the modest contribution that I might (or might not) make to closing some business for my company. I can, and probably will by carbon offsets for the trip, but I don't consider flying to be sustainable even if you do buy offsets.

I suppose if I were not going on this trip someone else would be going instead...