My backpack needs to go on a diet
by cindy ~ May 11th, 2009. Filed under: R & R, wwwTrek.
It’s equipment time! Time to organize everything we need to take with us for this long journey.
Sleeping under canvas for 3 months can require planning at the best of times, but couple that with running our mobile office presented us with a whole batch of new issues to address.
Paul & I headed off & bought our respective camping gear, tent, sleeping bag, mattress, etc.
Paul did most of his shopping online, whereas I was lucky enough to have a great camping store just around the corner so off I went on a shopping spree. I knew that luggage weight was going to be an problem so everything bought was micro this & that. Not a problem, or so I thought.
When I got home with my bootie of goods I thought it would be a good practice run to see how everything fit. Now we really didn’t think that was going to work the first time through did we? Not likely. I knew I was going to be in for quite a few practice attempts.
By the time I finally got everything to fit snugly, I knew I had better check my weight allowances as I was only permitted 39kg of stored luggage. However, how to do this without having to drag my backpack down to the chemists scales & fork out money to get it done. Then I came up with this great idea of a hanging hook scale that fishermen use to weight their catches. Which worked out great, because I came up with another idea of taking down my punch bag & hanging the scales from there.
Now the weight in. Uh oh …. nearly 11kg’s overweight. Not good.
Time for a repack. So what to throw out? My Aussie delicacies that I just had to take with me…. out it went. Also out came my emergency light pack, wayyyy to heavy. Out came a few other bits & pieces, and still I was 8kg’s over.
This was not going to be easy at all! But we’ll put that off until next weekend.
Shoes take up a lot of the space & weight, but unfortunately that’s a necessity because of the range of activities we are going to partake in. So it looks like it’s going to be a clothes sacrifice.
Stay tuned! Can I get this under 30kg??
Then we’ll tackle the carry-on luggage!
Honestly, I really think they should give smaller weight allowances to men on airlines, because they carry less than women. Men don’t have to travel with half of what women have to travel with.
