How many pairs of underwear do I need to travel the world?

Jason

I think this question summarizes the process that Janine and I went through this weekend in trying to pack our backpacks as if we were starting the world trip – practical and ludicrous at the same time. How can you predict these kinds of things (the answer is three by the way)?

Right now our packs are hovering around the 30 pound mark with clothes, gear, tents and personal kit. That’s pretty good but we’ll be looking for any way possible to shave off the weight. The difficulty is walking the line between having enough to do the remote treks and having too much stuff to be comfortable lugging the bags the rest of the time. 

In other news, the Sat Phone arrived in the mail yesterday. Very exciting! We are only short a few components necessary to transmit e-mail through it. This should allow us to blog anywhere from Tundra to Everest. Very cool.  I’ve veered between a desire to go minimal on this trip (the romance of the wandering adventurer is appealing) and a desire to get any gear necessary to capture all of the experiences we’re going to have. We’ve probably ended up going the latter route but we’re okay with that – at least for now.  At present the tech gear includes a digital camera, video camera, ipod (mainly for storing photos), sat phone, old palm pilot and a mini keyboard (for emergencies and e-mailing from remote locations).  For the Tundra trip at least, we’ll also have a solar panel and a multi-purpose recharging battery, both of which are pretty darn cool.

The unofficial name for my pack is RadioShack.