Packing, Chapter 1



accumulated stuff!

 Suitcase with wheels or a backpack? One piece of luggage or two? Blue jeans or cargo pants? How many electronic devices do we really need? What medicines do we need to take? Those were some of the questions that came up as Phillip and I began accumulating our stuff for the trip. And I do mean “stuff” because, if unchecked, we would be stuffing our travel bags, straining the zippers and causing a mess if TSA decided to open them to do a bag check at the airport. This is a picture of the miscellaneous travel-related “stuff” that’s accumulated on my dresser. No, we aren’t taking two cans of Scotchguard!

Regarding the luggage, we took the compromise position, a backpack with wheels. We aren’t trekking in the wilderness, carrying sleeping bags to sleep under the stars. No, a comfortable bed and a shower, hopefully with hot water, is the way we travel. However, the hotels we will stay in usually have more than one floor and don’t have elevators. Picturesque cobblestone streets are shown in the photos – but cobblestones and wheeled luggage are a combination that spells frustration. We were fortunate to find exactly what we (OK, exactly what I) were looking for at our local Academy sporting goods store, and as a bonus, it had a detachable day pack for me. Our karma must have been good that day, because at the checkout, we found it was on an unmarked 40% off sale! But could it hold all our travel items, or would we need more luggage? We actually tested the capacity by taking it on a cruise with us in October. For the cruise, I packed all our everyday clothes, toiletries, and electronics in it, with an extra suitcase for our fancy clothes – which are NOT going to Ecuador with us. And it worked fine, with more room than I expected.

One of the other tests we undertook on that October cruise was the wearing of the cargo pants. Phillip is a blue jeans guy. Blue jeans, however, consume a lot of packing space; take forever to dry; don’t have all those cool pockets; and you can’t turn them into shorts in under a minute, unless you have really sharp scissors. Yes, the cargo pants with the zip-off legs will identify us in Ecuador as tourists, but we would never pass as Ecuadorians anyway. Phillip agreed to try the cargo pants, so we bought some and wore them on the cruise. The many pockets and the almost instant shorts sold him on them for the Ecuador trip. He doesn’t wear them around home, of course preferring his blue jeans. He still brings up wearing his blue jeans on the airplane, and I still tell him that whatever we wear on the plane will need to be packed at some point, and WE DON’T HAVE ROOM FOR BLUE JEANS. I expect this may be an issue even as we walk out the door to catch the plane. Anyone care to wager on whether a pair of blue jeans will make the trip?
Next post: Electronic devices, aka the 21^st century security blankets