It’s final repack time, or at least I thought! Out half of it comes again to fit everything that I missed the first time round. Clothes you would think? I wish! Clothes are in very short supply & black seems to be the theme of the journey as it will show the least dirt & I will be able to have more than one dance per outfit. Why you say? There just wasn’t room for clothes!

Camping equipment slowly made it’s way out of my backpack in favour of leads, leads & more leads! One of the pitfalls of the mobile office is that you have to take into account the different countries power supplies, and that means that many many leads are required. There have been some intuitive hardware developers that have provided multi-adapter power paks, but unfortunately not enough.

My primary lifesaver as always has been my Blackberry smartphone. RIM (Resources in Motion) have been intuitive enough to provide the multi-adapter, however, others such as ASUS who make my eeePC didn’t have the forethought to think that a mobile device such as the eeePC would require such a nifty device as the multi-adaptor power pack. Therefore, adaptor plugs were also needed. Apple with their iPod were other culprits who didn’t carry forward their mobility to their power adaptors.

So in short, my backpack was a mass of leads & additions that were necessary to power these so-called mobile devices!

The time of departure was then upon me, and that fateful walk to the airport’s scales was filled with dread! Even though I had bought hanging fish scales to aid in my endeavour to guage my weight for the journey, I knew that there was bound to be some discrepency. What I didn’t expect was a massive 6 kilograms had to be left behind! You have no idea how hard it is to get rid of 6 kilograms of items when you are down to the barest of essentials!

Out came the air mattress! Will have to buy one when I land.

Out came my portable shower. I’ll just wing it & hope I don’t need it, and if I do I will have to buy another one.

Out came the drink bladder to my day pack. I survived with just a drink bottle in the Guatamalan rainforest so I could do the same again.

Still a couple of kilos to go!

Now it was getting hard! My eye’s rested on my new Crocs & realized that they could eliminate at least a kilo, and they did. “Sighs”… I was dying to try out my new Crocs too!

With a lot of ‘umming’ & ‘ahhing’ I finally got rid of another kilo. Yet I was still one kilo over. “Stuff it!” I thought. Let’s try this & see if maybe the check-in scales are wrong. Sure enough they were different again & I got to keep the remainder of my gear! “PHEWW!”

So my advice to all……

1. Fish scales are NOT a good indicator of weight
2. Expect all scales to be different & have items you are willing to disgard at the top of your packing
3. Try & purchase electrical items that have multi-adaptors on their power plugs
4. Don’t presume “mobile” means “mobile”. Mobile is as mobile as you have to make it most times
5. Be prepared to be stressed & take it in your stride!

Time to board the plane! It’s nearly 5am.