Kindness of Strangers

Things are finally starting to fall into place this week.  You may have noticed that the “Rent Our House!” tab has disappeared from our page.  Utilizing our “kindness of strangers” approach, we were able to secure a renter for the duration of our trip!  Our friends, John and Alicia, were able to refer a great tenant our way.  Our hope has always been to find a friend-of-a-friend to rent to, someone we can trust with our greatest asset.  So, thanks guys:  you’ve taken a real load off of our shoulders.

I’ve always said that once our tickets were purchashed and our house was rented, the rest was just details.  With those big items checked off our mounting to-do list, I am able to shift my focus to some of the smaller (and more interesting) things that need to be accomplished before July 13.  This week I began a photograph class.  People keep telling me to “take lots of great pictures” on our trip, which is a tall order.  I bought a nifty camera nearly a year ago, and thus far I’ve only mastered the automatic settings.  Realizing I need to learn how to operate the manual settings to do anything cool and artsy, I signed up for a photography class.  Once we hit the road we plan on creating photo galleries for each country we visit, so hopefully you’ll be able to witness the fruits of my labor.  I’m not the ideal photographer; it’s a technical craft for which I find I have very little patience (I still can’t, for the life of me, understand the concept of an f-stop and how it relates to aperture- and shutter-priority).  But a girl can dream!  We’re still trying to figure out the best way to store and back-up our photos from the road.  Our computer probably won’t store much, so we’ve considered buying an iPod to store photos.  We’ve also thought about buying a number of memory cards and storing photos that way; or, some combination of those two methods.  If any one has any brilliant ideas to this end, we’re all ears. 

We finished our final round of vaccinations this week, and are now guarded against nearly every disease that one can be vaccinated for.  We’ve spent so much time at the New Mexico Travel Health Clinic over the past two months that the nurse actually gave us a hug on the way out and asked us to send her a postcard.  I’m honestly not sure what I’ll do with my Friday mornings anymore.

In other news, my backpack that’s been on order from REI arrived this week!  I was excited to pick it up at the store and have it fitted on Thursday.  I still feel a little panicked when I see how small it is, but that’s just the way it’s gonna have to be.  I had an interesting conversation with the employee who fitted the bag for me, who had obviously done a great deal of extended international travel.  It’s fun to find a fellow soul who you can debate the relative pros and cons of bringing more than two pairs of shoes with.  We also discussed, at length, how to pack lightly without looking like a bum or about to embark on a safari.  One issue in which he had a definite opinion was the Eagle Creek packing folders and cubes.  The one commonality I’ve seen in all RTW packing lists is the addition of these flexible packing products.  They are supposed to make your backpack infinitely more organized and compact.  Stay tuned as The Mystery of How to Get Eight Months Worth of Stuff in One Bag continues…

We recently made our first major equipment purchase: our backpacks! While some RTW gurus would tell you we’re doing this a little early in the process, we wanted to take advantage of REI’s sale for members, which offered a 20% discount per bag through last Sunday. Two weeks ago we made our first trip to REI to mull over our various options. We had originally planned on buying a wheeled backpack, which offers both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that it makes navigating cities and airports very swift; if you’re staying put for awhile, it’s ideal. But once you leave the city streets, the design and weight makes strapping on the pack cumbersome. Loading 30 pounds in the wheeled model and walking around the store for 10 minutes persuaded me to go wheel-less. It also convinced me that I need to leave my hairdryer at home.

After an hour my head was swimming: I like three choices of any given item, so the panoply of backpacks at REI is my worst nightmare. We returned the following Friday to finalize our selection and make our purchase. In the interim, I hopped on REI’s website to research travel packs, which are designed for long-haul travel, and can be easily checked on airplanes (we long ago gave up the hope of getting a bag small enough to carry-on, and the travel packs don’t have tons of extra straps that can get snagged in baggage carousels). Maikael selected REI’s Grand Tour model, whereas I went for Osprey’s Waypoint 60, designed especially for women. I had my heart set on the Osprey Porter 65, because it was the only travel pack without a detachable daypack. Just like I’m not an athletic tennis shoe or T-shirt person, so, too, am I not a backpack person. I never knew how strongly I felt about this preference until I began looking at backpacks, one of many such realizations I’ve had about myself during this planning process. But the kindly REI employee convinced me that it’s more important to have the proper fitting bag — I guess I’ll leave the daypack at home. I digress: the point is we have small backpacks that will leave us very little room for packing (or overpacking).

That taken care of, we began investigating laptop computers. Here, again, micro is the way to go. We need something that is compact, lightweight, and can take a beating, all things that typically equal big bucks. Our friend, Tim, mentioned the Eee PC by Asus as a potential option a number of months ago. I was skeptical; in fact, I believe my exact words were, “What the hell is that?” But a number of travel websites have mentioned this model as ideal for extended travel. I am easily swept up by emotion, and after 10 minutes of investigating this little number, I was ready to run out and buy one. Maikael has encouraged me to think twice about what it will really be like to read a 7″ screen (a new model is scheduled for April release with a 8.9″ screen, which may be more practical).  But it weighs in at just under two pounds, and after my experience at REI, I’m willing to give up my eyesight for a lighter haul.  Sure, its battery life is pretty paltry, and its computing functions are rather basic, but we don’t need it to do much. And, I’ll admit, it’s pretty darned cute; although, Maikael has already put the kibosh on a pink model. At $400, I don’t think this computer can be beat for our purposes.

Just as micro minis are the in fashion for spring, so is diminutive travel equipment.

Last night, I had my first dream about the trip. I’m not sure what prompted it, but it didn’t seem to portend anything very good.  In the dream we are in Indonesia, and have somehow managed to find ourselves deep in the jungle, in the middle of a military coup. Needing to evacuate further into the tropical tangle of vines and creepy bugs, we are prodded to pack a prescribed list of clothing as quickly as possible. I am frantically trying to decide what to pack, and can’t seem to locate my backpack. With the soldiers fast approaching, clothes spilling from my arms, I yell at Maikael, “I knew we never should have come on this trip!”

I’m not sure if this dream reflects a fear of being trapped in the midst of a potentially volatile situation, or my impending anxiety about packing for this trip.

One of the most common question we hear regarding the planning process is, “What are you going to pack?” The simple answer is:  I have no clue.  Packing philosophies seem to differ vastly between travelers. Some people swear by jeans; others say they are the single worst item to pack. Some books encourage men to pack one pair of shorts, which will double as swimming trunks and walking shorts. Others say sandles are the only type of shoe you need, which I’m still trying to figure out. Everyone seems to be in agreement that you should never bring a hairdryer, but I’m bringing mine anyways. My grand compromise is that I’ll leave the straightening iron at home.

I’ve been looking to two of my favorite RTW travel sites for guidance. Susan and Grace at Thirteen Months have an entire section of their website dedicated to what they packed. I am fascinated by their specificity and love of the Ex-Officio brand. The Lost Girls’ packing list seems to fly in the face of conventional RTW packing wisdom, for they include such items as “dressy tanks,” dance tights, dresses, and 12 pair of underwear. They are from New York, though, and, as a consequence of their beefed up packing list, look very chic in most of their pictures. But the general consensus, even amongst The Lost Girls, is that less is more.

If the anxiety about what to pack wasn’t enough, figuring out what to pack it in is even worse. I have no doubt that the fact that I couldn’t locate my backpack in the dream is a deep manifestation of this fear. The big debate is: wheeled backpack or traditional backpack? You would think this would be an easy decision, but I’ve spent hours pondering the matter. Wheels are heavy and will inevitably suck as I slog through day three on the Milford Track. But most of our time will be spent away from hiking trails, in which case wheels are very convenient.  One must also consider issues of weight and carry-on requirements, which the airlines have recently clamped down on. Sometimes I feel as if I am living, breathing GRE logic problem.