On the road again
Woohoo, after my traditional hectic few weeks of last minute travel prep, I’m finally on the road! I’m currently about an hour out of Tokyo.
I can’t believe how stressful it is trying to get everything in order before leaving on an extended trip. I guess I made things worse by ignoring my responsibilities for most of the year and then trying to cram them all into a few weeks before leaving. I had to catch up on months worth of snailmail; banking, taxes, dentist, travel shots, packing and repacking; all while trying to relax and visit with family and friends.
But I’m pretty happy now that it’s all done. I bought a couple sweet new packs; all my gear for the next six months fits into two bags I can carry on my back: a massive 110 litre capacity wheeled duffel bag with stowable backpack straps, and a new North Face daypack with laptop compartment.
My duffel bag weighed in at 53 lbs at the airport, and I think the daypack must be about 25-30 so I wouldn’t want to carry all that stuff on my back for very long (especially without a real backpack) but I could probably do a few km with it if I had to.
I feel a bit nerdy doing a backpacker-style trip with a wheeled suitcase instead of a backpack, but on past trips I have only rarely needed a real backpack; 95% of the time I’d rather have wheels. And I was tired of trying to load and unload stuff through a small hole at the top of the pack. If I ever want to do a multi-day trek somewhere, I can probably get by with my daypack (30L capacity) or rent a real pack.
Anyway, I managed to fit tons of cool stuff into these packs, including:
- scuba gear (mask, fins, snorkel)
- the usual camera gear (managed to limit myself to two lenses)
- external keyboard and mouse for my laptop (because laptops are evil and turn people into hunchbacks otherwise)
- external speakers and hard drive for music and movies
- CD writer (for photo backups)
- tons of office supplies, cables and chargers — at least six different chargers come to mind
- laptop lock, Pacsafe portable travel safe
- four laptop batteries, ~9 hours worth, so I can be productive on extended bus/plane/train trips
- way too many vitamins and travel meds
- a Martin backpacker guitar!
I think clothing is only about 10% of my overall gear, and will be reduced further when I ditch my warm clothes after leaving Japan.
It’s weird… I’m still not all that excited about my trip though I know I should be. On the flight over here a couple songs on my ipod reminded me of snowboarding last winter, which made me miss Whistler. But I know once I really start travelling I’ll get into it more. I remember at the end of my Australia trip last year I desperately wanted to change my flight to return months later instead. This time, I have no return flight booked :)