It’s been a while since I last posted. I came down with a stinking cold that ended up lasting four weeks, and it was all I could do to go to work and come home and fall over. I’m pretty much well again, though, and hip-deep in preparations for my trip.
That’s right, I booked it. As promised in my last post, I went to the travel agent on the Saturday and booked my trans-Atlantic flights, my tour of Morocco and my travel insurance. When I got home, I booked the various relevant EasyJet flights. Over the intervening weeks, as I’ve been fleshing out my plans, I have started to book train tickets and hotel stays. I’m not completely planned yet, partly because I need to call some UK relatives (which will happen this weekend) and partly because I want to leave some flexibility in my trip.
What’s stressing me out most at the moment is the packing. Now, I lived on the road for three years. I moved every six weeks, which meant packing everything I owned into four suitcases and packing up an entire office into a 3-foot space along one wall of a trailer. I am a champion packer. In almost all cases, I can throw everything I need for any trip into a suitcase in less than an hour. And make it fit. But this trip is challenging. I will be going to the desert, the Atlantic coast of Morocco, up into the mountains in November, and all over the UK. I need to pack light, which is not my forte. And I need a number of items I don’t own, which is getting expensive. My justification for a lot of it is either ‘I needed it anyway’ or ‘I can use it on future trips’. But it is starting to make me worry about my budget. So, my reaction for the last two weeks has been to largely ignore it all. But I’m running out of time for that. So, tomorrow is going to be a marathon shopping day with my mother. Mountain Equipment Co-op, Tilley Endurables, Factory Direct, and probably Shoppers Drug Mart. That should put a large dent in my to-do list.
kithika