David's Gear

Aside from clothes and medication, this is the gear I'm planning to take on our travels.  While it looks large when spread out, it all fits in my backpack (the toiletries, journals, Kindle, and backup drives will be in my carry-on sized bag, along with clothes).

Starting in the center, and roughly spiraling out:
Canon 7D

EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM

EF 70-200 f/4 L IS USM

67mm hoya multicoated filter on 70-200 for weather resistance

EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

EF 1.4x II Extender

Body/lens cap pair

Four 16GB CF cards

Ultra-light gloves

77mm circular polarizer

Two spare batteries

Battery charger

Rocket blower bulb for dust mitigation

Disposable rain sleeve for 7D & lens

Neoprene sleeves for lenses

Crumpler Haven (nearly all of the above fits in that, which in turn rests in the bottom of my backpack)

Zip-ties and gaffer's tape--my equivalent of bailing wire and duct tape

Above the 7D:

Canon G12

3 16GB SD cards

1 spare battery

Waterproof housing (for some portions of the trip only)

Mini tripod

Lightweight monopod

Photo processing and backup:

Lenovo x220 laptop (secondary photo backups)

Silicon Power A80 1TB USB 3.0 drive (primary photo storage)

Western Digital 1TB USB 2.0 drive (primary photo backups)

Multiple 2.5" SATA drives (incremental tertiary photo backups, to be shipped home)

Mukii ZIO impact/water resistant cases for 2.5" drives

Mukii ZIO SATA to USB 3.0 cable for SATA drive backups

Mukii ZIO SATA to USB 2.0 cable (spare/redundant)

Kingston USB card reader for photo import

Spare/redundant USB card reader (not pictured)

USB mini cable for direct camera photo import (in case both card readers are lost/broken)

16GB USB flash drive for generic storage (not pictured)

USB flash drive configured with bootable UBCD recovery tools (not pictured)

SD card that doubles as a USB flash drive, configured as bootable Ubuntu 12 in case of drive failure or paranoia attack

2.5" 9mm SATA drive (clone of boot drive in Lenovo, in case of drive failure)

Reading, writing, and other:

Journals

Kindle keyboard

Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 (not pictured)

Multiple USB Micro chargers

Steripen (USB-rechargable UV water sterilization)

Black Diamond Spot headlamp

Headphones, stereo splitter and extension cables

Passport, immunization records, and decoy wallet (small bills, expired credit cards)

Toiletries:

Folding toothbrush

Small comb

Portable electric razor

Toothpaste

Tissue

Toilet paper (sans cardboard tube)

Soap and shampoo

Cotton swabs

Ear plugs

The clothing list will be determined by some trial and error on our road trip.

The backups and redundancies are probably overkill, but I'm professionally responsible (for one more day) for backups, and I know how terrible it is to have a backup failure, and also how to reduce the chances of having one, so I'm going with the overkill option, rather than underkill.

We've been living by lists for the last two weeks as we've been moving out and preparing our house for a renter, as well as planning the trip, and this list was easy--just copied from one of our existing lists.  I'm looking forward to some listless weeks ahead.

Losing it

I think we can all agree that I've handled the stress of the last few months rather well, for me. Sure, I'm up a few pounds from some feeling-eating, but generally I've been upbeat, focused, and generally gung ho.  To some extent I realized early on that if I fully acknowledged my anxieties, they would mushroom all over me, so I've just put my head down and crossed things off lists, did things that needed to be done, and pushed that part of me that is freaking out, worrying, fretting, doomsdaying and naysaying into a deep mental corner (let's call her Lois, shall we?), and sat on her.  It was all going so well. *Foreshadowing!*

On Saturday David and I had a heart to heart about hiring movers, and he sanely insisted that he'd like to enjoy the first few months of our trip, rather than being crippled by back pain for them.  It all made sense, and after some hemming and hawing I booked movers through E-move.com. Not the cheapest, not the most expensive, with more reviews and favorable ones. 

And then I went out to the garage to get some bubble wrap and starting sobbing.  I can't exactly explain it, because it all made sense, and it isn't that much money, but Lois had apparently had enough. She'd been sat on for far too long, and she wasn't going to take it anymore.  I pulled myself together, blamed my red face on the hot garage, and proceeded to bubble wrap some fragile stuff and sniffle a lot.  I don't blame David for not noticing, or saying anything if he did notice. His education has been extensive.  I just wanted to work on punching Lois into submission, and wrap some teapots at the same time.  Eventually I regained my equilibrium, and we met friends for a birthday dinner out, and maybe a glass or two of wine finally was what settled Lois down to a grumble.

Part of the reason I didn't pour my anxiety out to David is that I know the peace we're existing in right now (what little there is) is somewhat fragile.  And there is always this fear that whatever issue awakens Lois will startle his own gremlin of self-doubt, and a domino effect will happen.  I will admit, however, that David has had far fewer expressions of uncertainty.  But then again, I think he's just that much better and stifling his own version of Lois (Louie?).

So getting back to this weekend, we were both doing ok. We delivered a load of stuff to my parents' basement, had a family lunch, ran some errands on the way home, and then got back to trucking along with packing things when we got back home.  We left our miniature poodle Ruby with my parents (where she'll stay when we're gone) so that she could avoid the stress of the next week before the moving truck comes. And then as we were packing things we realized that she probably wouldn't come back to the house to stay until we return from our trip. The next three weeks are crazy stressful, one week with moving chaos, one week with paint, cleaning, and no furniture chaos, and one week where we're homeless by Monday. While we'll see her in the next three weeks, she effectively had already moved out. So I packed up all her her toys, brushes, special shampoo, and her treats. I looked at David, and he looked at me, and we both felt blindsided. It felt a little like she'd died, which was crazy, because we'd left her bouncing off the walls at my parents' house a few hours earlier.  David was hugging me, and I was crying, but somehow laughing at myself at the same time.

It was just all too much, I guess. 

When I had some time to reflect about it, I realized what my problem with hiring movers was. It wasn't that I freaked out about moving, or had any doubts about the trip. It was that I know every dollar I spend on moving expenses is a dollar I don't spend in Bali, or Argentina, or Cairo. And while I know that spending money on movers rather than on physical therapy for David's back is a sound decision, tell that to Lois.

The Ruby thing is pure projection. It's all happening so fast, but this one snuck up on us. I realized that the last walk we took on Saturday night was her last walk in the neighborhood (for a year! Not dead yet!).  Packing up her leash, food and water dishes, and her soccer balls was this small (much, much easier) version of what we're doing with everything. And while I'm excited for the future, there is much that is bittersweet about the moving process.  You can't look forward all the time. You just can't.  And Lois, she's there in my peripheral vision, every time I turn my head.

Last night I did what I always do to calm myself down. I baked. I made granola and two types of cookies and used up ingredients and basically said goodbye to that part of my life for the next while. I got flour on my Kitchenaid mixer and in my hair. David licked the last of the batter off the spatula, and I kissed my baking career on both cheeks. It felt good to get to do it one last time, knowing it was the last time. It was so much better that way--not a Lois in sight.

And as much as I'd like to stash Lois at my parents' house along with all of our other things, she's probably along for the ride this next year (so! much! to worry! about!).  So I have two choices: I can either make my peace with her and try and hug it out, or I can keep pushing her into the corner and turning my back on her.  I haven't chosen a strategy yet, but I'll keep you posted.

Fortune smiles

 

While I don't necessarily believe I have great luck, when it comes to travel, I have great fortune. I got this last Wednesday night, and since our tickets have been purchased, it sure seems like it just might come true. 

Before our trip to Africa a few years ago, I got this one:

And holy heck did that end up being true.  Of course, I'm sure approximately 1/4 of the available fortunes in cookies have something to do with travel. But I'm willing to think it's a message from the universe to me.  Maybe I need to buy a lottery ticket too.

Not a square to spare

We are down to 2 six-packs of toilet paper.  Can we make it 28ish more days on that? It may be the last of the Cottonelle in our lives for quite some time.

The Flights

On Friday we spent an hour and a half on the phone with our travel agent at AirTreks booking all of our flights through Istanbul at the end of May, 2013. She was great, and very patient with our last minute dithering on dates. And after everything was booked, we made a very large credit card payment.

And then I might have gotten a little teary and emotional. I'm still not sure why, but I'm thinking it's a combination of plunking down such a large amount of money, having a definite, set itinerary for the next ten months, and a healthy measure of fear about the future. All through this process, we keep saying, "We're really doing this." But more than almost anything, including giving notice at our jobs, renting our house, packing up all of our stuff, or booking other portions of the trip, this was the moment it all sunk in for me.  Everything is theoretical until you book the airfare. 

If you click on the "Where We're Going" link up above, you can see maps of our destinations and a rough outline of when we'll be where.  The road trip part is ambitious for six weeks, I realize, and we'll probably cull some things off there as we go, but I thought I'd be optimistic put it all up there.

Our fridge currently has four lists pinned to it, written in sharpie so that I can see the items that need doing from across the room.  They are: House, Move, Trip, and Things We Haven't Thought Of.  That last one is still blank, and hopefully it will stay that way, though I think it might become the overflow list when the other pages are full.

Although I buried this lede above, we did in fact get our house rented, which is a huge relief for me. No one else was worried that it would rent, so bully for them for being right. It was listed on a Sunday, by Tuesday our property manager had scheduled a showing for Friday, which apparently turned into 4 showings, with a "strong" application and a backup. The "strong" application checked out by Monday, and a lease was signed by Tuesday, I think. So yeah, a week. I was needlessly worried. The bonus on that is we think (hope) we've got a good renter. Single, veterinarian, one small dog, currently lives in the neighborhood, and really wanted to stay in the neighborhood.  We're schedule to be out, and for her to move in, on August 21st.

David's last day of work will be August 20th. Mine is August 24th. What this means is that we've got to be out of our house before I'm done with work. Thankfully I have a wonderfully gracious friend who has offered to let me stay that week. I think David will probably be staying with his mother in Loveland, trying to get things done and ready for our road trip, which will be helpful.

The next three weekends are a flurry of out-of-town visitors, trips to Home Depot and my parents' house, trying to get together with friends and family before we leave, and one chaotic weekend of furniture moving. We'll move furniture out on the 11th, and deliver it to my parents on the 12th, and then we'll be sleeping on an air mattress and painting for a week. I'll be happy to have all of the furniture out so I can go to town on the painting, but it'll feel very sparse and echo-y that week.

As far as trip stuff goes, we also went to the travel medicine clinic, and got the last of the shots we needed.  The yellow fever vaccine is actually a live virus, but there weren't any side effects other than a rash from ripping off the band-aid. We each got several prescriptions for malaria medications and traveler's diarrhea.  Whee!

We're really doing this. We really are.